Chapter 055

Threshold

For nearly half a minute, the endless void they floated in was silent. Neither Zach nor Zorian knew

what to say, and the Guardian of the Threshold seemed content to placidly wait for further questions.

Zorian would have liked to say he was considering the implications of this new knowledge at the

time, but the truth is that he spent most of it being surprised at how well Zach was taking all this. He

kind of expected the other boy to freak out and start swearing and shouting by now. But no, Zach

was surprisingly calm and quiet about the situation. The only evidence he was in any way upset was

a slight frown on his face.

“So,” Zach eventually said, his voice cutting through the unnerving silence that sprung up around

them. “What now?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Zorian admitted. “I really didn’t think Red Robe had already left the time

loop. It makes so much sense, though, now that I look back on things…”

“Yeah, he really screwed us over, didn’t he?” Zach sighed.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it like that,” Zorian smiled. “I’m pretty sure this is not what he had been

planning. We were meant to disappear. The time loop was supposed to collapse when the controller

of the time loop left this place, permanently removing us as a threat. But we’re still here, and if the

time loop is this out of its normal parameters, it might actually be possible to get out of this place.”

“Heh,” Zach chuckled. “Now that you mention it, yeah. And also, this means I can stop holding back.

You too, for that matter. We’ve both been doing our best to keep a low profile to stop Red Robe from

noticing our activities. Now that we know he is no longer here…”

“Yes,” Zorian agreed. “The way I see it, we have three main priorities. Number one, we need to find

out how long we have until the time loop collapses. Number two, we need to find a way to get out.

And number three, we have to try and find out who the hell Red Robe really is so that we can take

care of him quickly if… when we exit this place.”

Zorian turned to the side to look at the Guardian of the Threshold, who had been quietly floating in

place not far from them while they talked. It didn’t appear bothered by them ignoring it.

“We should question the Guardian about everything we can think of,” Zorian noted. “Who knows

what kind of critical secrets it knows, and it doesn’t appear as if it cares to share anything on its own

initiative. Though that could take a while – we should probably return to our bodies for a while to

make sure we aren’t interrupted.”

“Do we even have to worry about that?” Zach asked, pulling on his jacket in order to demonstrate the

way their clothes seemed an integral part of their body. “The cube seems to have ripped our souls

out of our bodies to bring us here. Does it even matter if our bodies get killed out there?”

“We could be just projected here,” Zorian shook his head. “It sounds like the simplest way to achieve

this, to be honest. Then again, that would leave the loop controller awfully vulnerable while messing

around with controls. Hmm… Guardian?”

“You are merely projected into this place, but your stay will not be cut short by events in the outside

world,” the Guardian explained. It was apparently smart enough to interpret what his question was

likely going to be based on his and Zach’s conversation. Interesting. “If your physical forms suffer

critical damage, or if soul tampering is detected, I will draw in your souls inside the Gate for

safekeeping. Your time here will remain uninhibited, though you will have to start a new iteration of

the loop in order to leave the place, as I cannot re-anchor your souls back to your bodies if they are

not sufficiently intact.”

“Well. Good to know, I guess,” Zorian mumbled. He looked at Zach, and found that the other boy

was already staring at him. “Do you have anything you want to ask the Guardian or…?”

“You go first,” Zach told him, shaking his head.

“Alright. First of all, is there a time limit as to how long we can remain here?” Zorian asked.

“When this iteration of the loop ends, so will your current visit to this place,” the Guardian responded.

“Other than that, no.”

So when the time loop restarts, they will be flung back to their bodies at the beginning of the month,

but other than that, they could stay here as long as possible.

They had plenty of time, then.

“What are the criteria for each iteration’s end?” Zorian asked curiously. “Is mere passage of time

sufficient, or is there more to it?”

“Passage of time is sufficient,” the Guardian confirmed. “No iteration is allowed to last for more than

a month at the time. Beyond that, there is a multitude of contingencies that will cause the iteration to

terminate prematurely.”

“Can you list those contingencies?” Zorian asked.

“No,” the Guardian stated emotionlessly. “You aren’t authorized for that information.”

Zorian blinked in surprise. Though he had suspected the Guardian wouldn’t be able to answer all of

their questions, he thought it would have to do more with it being just a dumb animation spell in the

end, not that it would literally refuse to help them like that.

“What? But I thought we’re the Controller,” Zach piped in suddenly. “How can we not be authorized

to know?”

“The Controller doesn’t have unrestricted authorization,” the Guardian explained. “Only the Maker

and his agents have access to information about the workings of the Gate.”

“Maker?” Zach repeated incredulously. “Maker of what?”

“Of the Gate, of course,” the Guardian said. Zorian could almost imagine the Guardian rolling his

eyes at the question, even though its eyes didn’t work like that and its voice never changed in tone.

“So the Controller isn’t the ultimate authority when it comes to the Gate or the time loop?” Zorian

asked. The Guardian immediately confirmed this. “What can you tell us about this Maker, then?”

“You aren’t authorized to know the identity of the Maker,” the Guardian informed him.

Of course it was going to be something like that…

“Ugh. This thing is so damn annoying!” Zach complained.

Ten more fruitless minutes were spent on trying to question the Guardian about the Maker, its

agents, whether it was a god (like Zorian suspected) or not, how long it had been since the Maker

had last interacted with the Gate, and so on. The Guardian’s response was the same for each of

them: they weren’t allowed to know.

Zorian wished he could just invade the thing’s mind and be done with it, but their inability to perform

magic in this place extended to his psychic abilities. They had no way to force the entity into

cooperation, and eventually decided to move on to other topics.

“You said no iteration is allowed to last for more than a month,” Zorian reminded the Guardian. “Can

you tell us why?”

“When an iteration is over, everything in it is destroyed,” the Guardian began. Well, good to have

that confirmed… Zorian had assumed it was so for a while now, but having the Guardian verify it

was nice. “Under certain philosophical outlooks, this could be viewed as mass murder…”

“But not under all of them, huh?” Zorian mumbled distastefully.

“Others do not view destruction of copies as a problem, so long as they do not diverge excessively

from the original,” the Guardian continued, ignoring Zorian’s interjection. “The time loop is set up

under such an assumption. Thus, it is imperative that entities copied by the time loop are not given

enough time to meaningfully diverge from the originals, as their destruction would then become

unethical. A month was determined to be a good cut-off point.”

“What if one of the copies managed to achieve awareness of the time loop and found a way to

maintain continuity across different iterations?” Zorian asked. “Hypothetically speaking.”

“That would be very unfortunate for the copy,” the Guardian noted. “Only the Controller can actually

leave the time loop, after all.”

“See, this is the part I don’t get,” Zach suddenly interjected. “Why was such a rule put into place? I

mean, there is only one Controller to begin with, so why put that sort of limitation in place?”

“To stop the Controller from trying to smuggle some of the copies out of the time loop,” the Guardian

said matter-of-factly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

There was a short pause as both Zach and Zorian processed this.

“Why… why is that important?” Zorian asked shakily.

“Because only the Controller has their real soul pulled into the time loop,” the Guardian said.

“Everyone else is a copy. For a Controller of the loop to leave, I only have to re-anchor their soul

back to their original body. For one of the copies to enter the real world, I would have to switch their

soul with the soul of the original. This would effectively kill the original.”

There was another, longer pause following this explanation.

Zorian wasn’t terribly surprised at the fact that him leaving the loop would require he switch his soul

with his original. It was one of the first ideas he came up with himself, after all. What surprised him

was that Zach was apparently not a copy. Being the Controller had more to it than just having a

marker stamped on your soul, it seemed.

“So the Controller has their original soul drawn into the time loop when it is first made,” Zorian said.

“They aren’t a copy, so there is no problem with them leaving. But everyone else would have to kill

someone to get out, and that’s unacceptable. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” the Guardian agreed.

“But you could do that?” Zach suddenly spoke up. “If one of the copies wanted to leave this place,

you could switch their soul with that of the original?”

“Theoretically,” the Guardian admitted, “but that goes against what I was made to do. I am the

Guardian of the Threshold. One of the main tasks the Maker gave me was to ensure things inside

the time loop could not menace the source of the template. If a diverged copy tried to kill the original

by switching their souls with it, I would do my best to stop them.”

“What about a normal, un-diverged copy?” asked Zorian. “Surely there is no harm in replacing the

original with a normal copy. They’re practically the same thing! It’s what makes it okay to destroy

millions of souls every month or so, isn’t it?”

The Guardian hesitated. A short, tense silence descended on the scene as it considered the

scenario.

“So long as the copies do not diverge too much from the original, such a switch would be

theoretically acceptable,” the Guardian eventually admitted. “But it is my purpose to keep the time

loop from spilling out in the real world as much as possible, so I would still refuse to perform such a

switch. Only the controller, with the knowledge and secrets they gathered inside the time loop, is

allowed to leave and make their mark on the world outside, since they are technically of that world to

begin with.”

“Alright,” Zorian nodded, signaling Zach with his hand to drop the issue. Though still very placid, the

Guardian seemed almost agitated by their current line of questioning. Zorian was afraid that if they

pushed it too much it might realize one of them was a copy somehow and do something to ‘correct’

this. Best to leave the topic alone for now. “Let’s move on to something else. Guardian, you said the

Gate is barred because the Controller has already left the time loop.”

“Yes,” the entity confirmed.

“Can you tell me how many iterations that was ago?” Zorian asked.

“The Controller is still inside the time loop, Controller,” the Guardian said unhelpfully.

Some more variations of that question confirmed that the Guardian had no idea when Red Robe left.

The Controller left, but didn’t actually leave, and the Guardian was hopelessly confused about the

whole thing.

Asking the Guardian for Red Robe’s description or other identifying information didn’t work either –

the Guardian didn’t seem to perceive the world in the same way they did, despite its fairly human-

like appearance and the lifelike avatars he and Zach were inhabiting. It seemed to ignore just about

everything in terms of identifying characteristics when it come to the Controller. Other than the

marker, of course.

“So the Controller that left has the marker, then?” Zorian asked.

“Of course,” the Guardian confirmed. “How could he have left, otherwise?”

“How does the Controller get the marker in the first place?” Zorian asked. “Is it hereditary, assigned

by the Gate itself according to some criteria or what?”

“The Controller is marked by the Key, by the Maker, or by its agents,” the Guardian said. “I am not

aware of what criteria were used in choosing any particular Controller. It is ultimately irrelevant to my

purpose to know such things.”

“But the Key is lost,” Zach said, frowning. “Scattered across vast distances. And if the Maker is a god

like you suspect he is, well… the gods have been silent for centuries. That only leaves his agents.

Who would that be?”

“Impossible to say for now,” Zorian shrugged. “But apparently you were purposely chosen by

someone to go in here.”

“Or maybe Red Robe was,” Zach said gloomily. “I know you think I’m the original looper, but the fact

that Red Robe was capable of leaving just like that… it could be that he’s the one who’s the real

deal. You saw how the Guardian reacted to the possibility of switching souls between the copy and

the original. How did Red Robe leave if he’s just a copy?”

“I don’t know,” Zorian sighed. “It’s too bad the Guardian gets all stupid whenever anything involving

Red Robe leaving is brought up.”

“If it didn’t get all stupid about it, we would have probably been erased out of existence when Red

Robe left,” Zach told him. “So that’s probably a blessing in disguise. Anyway, Guardian? This marker

I have on me is unique, yes? There is no way for there to be multiple Controller markers?”

“None,” the Guardian confirmed. “Before the time loop is activated, marking a new person will

invalidate the old marker. Inside the time loop, the Controller marker cannot be invoked, and only

lesser markers can be placed.”

“’Lesser markers’? What the hell are those now?” Zach protested.

“The Controller can temporarily add people to the time loop by placing a lesser marker on them,” the

Guardian explained.

“What?” Zach squawked. “There is a way to include someone in the time loop and you’re only

mentioning this now!? And what do you mean temporary?”

“Though I’m happy to answer any question you may have to the best of my ability, I am ultimately

not designed to teach the Controller how to operate the time loop,” the Guardian said. “That is the

job of whoever placed the marker on you. And by temporary, I mean that the target of the lesser

marker will retain their memories and abilities for up to six iterations before the marker dissolves.”

“Why would this lesser marker be temporary like that?” Zach asked, baffled. “Is there a way to make

it permanent?”

“It is temporary to keep divergence from the original to a manageable level and discourage the

Controller from getting excessively emotionally attached to copies marked in such a fashion,” the

Guardian explained. “There is no way to make it permanent, as that would be needlessly cruel. They

cannot leave the time loop, after all.”

“But if copies that retain awareness for more than a month count as people and killing them is

wrong, doesn’t that mean that using these lesser markers is effectively murder?”

“Yes,” the Guardian readily agreed. “But it is not the Gate that does it, so it is acceptable. It is up to

the Controller to decide when and if they feel comfortable using such an ability.”

“So…” Zorian began after a short pause.

“I would never have used such a spell,” Zach immediately said, correctly guessing what Zorian was

about to ask. “Never. Why would I torture myself by bringing people into the loop, knowing that they

would suddenly go back to their old, ignorant self in just six restarts?”

“Fair enough,” Zorian said, guessing he had touched upon a sensitive topic. “Guardian, what about

the ability to expel people from the time loop? Make them start each iteration soulless and dead?

Does this ability exist?”

“The Controller has such an ability as well,” the Guardian confirmed.

By now, Zorian knew better than to ask whether such an ability had been used in the past. The

Guardian had very limited awareness about what happened in the time loop itself, caring for little

except the Controller itself.

“How about the ability to restore people ‘erased’ in such a manner back?” he asked instead. He was

still angry at the matriarch for planning to betray him, but he wanted her back anyway.

“No,” the Guardian said. “The ability instructs the Gate to make changes to the base template that is

used to construct each iteration. There is no undoing them without direct intervention from the

Maker. The Controller is advised to use this ability with wisdom and restraint.”

For the next twenty minutes, Zach and Zorian tried to question the Guardian about the manner in

which these abilities could be performed by the Controller or about any other abilities they may have

at their disposal. Sadly, neither of those inquiries achieved results. The Guardian did not know how

any of these abilities might be accomplished, and it refused to list all the abilities the Controller had,

saying they were not authorized to know that information.

“This makes no sense,” Zach complained. “It’s happy to tell us about specific abilities if we ask, but a

simple list of all options is forbidden?”

“Well, it sort of makes sense if the Maker didn’t want every Controller to know about all the features

at their disposal,” mused Zorian. “If some or all of the Controllers are given limited information, you

don’t want to let the Guardian tell them all about it anyway…”

Another fruitless question and answer session occurred, where Zorian tried to ask the Guardian

about the history of the time loop and its purpose. The Guardian claimed not to have any knowledge

of previous time loops, though, beyond simply knowing they existed. Apparently it did not retain its

memories between different time loops. As for the purpose of the time loop…

“The purpose of the time loop is between the Controller and the one who marked them,” the

Guardian concluded. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is whatever the Controller

wants it to be. There is little to stop them from doing whatever they want while inside the time loop,

after all.”

“Alright, next question, then,” Zorian sighed. “Can you tell me how long will it be before the time loop

runs out of whatever is powering it and shuts down? That is to say, how long do we have to leave

this place?”

“Yes, of course. The time loop has enough power for 52 more iterations before it must shut down,”

the Guardian said. “Assuming maximum utilization of each iteration, that is equivalent to little more

than four years of operation.”

Four years… maybe he was just greedy, but that seemed very short to him. He asked the Guardian

about that just to see what it would say. He expected it to refuse to answer, bringing up their lack of

sufficient authorization or whatever, but the Guardian actually had an answer for them this time.

“The time loop is normally supposed to be initiated at the peak of planetary alignment,” the Guardian

explained. “Unfortunately, something seems to have gone wrong and the time loop has been

activated one month prior to it. This made everything more costly, causing the time loop to degrade

far more rapidly than it is supposed to.”

“Do you know how long the time loop had been in existence thus far?” Zorian asked.

“967 iterations,” the Guardian answered. “Approximately 30 years in linear time.”

Wait, those numbers were kind of strange… how could almost a thousand iterations equal 30

measly years?

“Wait,” frowned Zorian. “So the time loop spends power per iteration, not according to how much

time passes?”

“Yes,” the Guardian confirmed.

“But I cut a lot of restarts short by dying to some stupid shit in the first few days,” Zach protested.

“Are you telling me I’ve been burning through our allotted time every time I did that?”

“Yes,” the Guardian confirmed again blandly. “It is the Controller’s right to do such a thing, however.

Presumably you felt the gains were worth the sacrifice of additional time.”

“Hell no, I didn’t!” Zach protested. “I just didn’t know any better! If I knew all this, I would have been a

lot more cautious about this shit!”

“Unfortunate,” the Guardian said. It did not sound very sorry or compassionate, however, using the

same pleasantly bland voice it always did. “It seems you were poorly prepared for this undertaking.

You should complain to whoever gave you the marker once you get outside.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Just as soon as I manage to find the bastard,” Zach said gloomily, “So

anyway, let’s just get this finally out of the way… Guardian, how can we unbar the gate?”

“You would have to present me with the Key by bringing it before the Gate,” the Guardian said

simply. “If you present all five pieces, you will gain sufficient authorization to reopen the gate.”

“I don’t suppose you could tell us where to find those things, then?” Zach tried.

“No,” the Guardian immediately answered. Of course. “But finding them should not be too difficult for

you. Your marker can sense their presence.”

Not for the first time, Zorian wished the damn marker stamped on his soul came with an instruction

manual or something.

Though they continued to question the Guardian for two more hours, very little new information

came out of it. When they finally decided to leave, the Guardian informed them that they would have

to start a new iteration of the time loop because their bodies had been ‘excessively damaged’ while

they talked to the Guardian and the dumb thing didn’t find it important to mention that until they were

ready to leave.

After about five minutes, when Zorian realized Zach was not going to stop ranting at the Guardian

any time soon, he just reached into his soul and flipped the marker restart switch.

Everything went mercifully dark and silent.

- break -

Like always, Zorian’s awakening was done via Kirielle jumping on top of him. The events

immediately following the awakening were also fairly typical, with him having his talk with Ilsa and

dodging Mother’s attempts at conversation while having breakfast. He even ended up inviting Kirielle

to come with him to Cyoria, despite initially planning to leave her behind. Partially, this was because

he realized his vague plans of rushing to gather the Key as soon as possible and find a way to fool

the Guardian into letting him out were rather premature and he should really take some time to calm

down and digest things a little. But an equally important reason for it was that he realized he needed

a break. The previous restart had been very exhausting, what with all the non-stop aranea hunting

and the various revelations at the end, and he didn’t feel like jumping into another long-term mission

right away. Taking a restart or two to relax a little and think things through wasn’t going to kill them.

The time limit they had was uncomfortably short for his tastes, but not that short.

He was just wondering how to explain all this to Zach when they next meet each other when he was

interrupted by the knock on the door.

What? That… that doesn’t usually happen…

He went to open the door, reaching out with his mind sense towards the unknown visitor, only to find

Zach on the doorstep. Apparently his fellow time traveler wasn’t content to wait for him on Cyoria’s

train station.

Zorian was kind of shocked, and not just by the fact Zach decided to come to his home…

He could actually sense Zach’s mind now. It was still shielded, but the boy wasn’t under the effect of

mind blank anymore. Zorian was kind of touched at the show of trust this represented.

“Hello, Zach,” Zorian said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Yeah, well, our last meeting’s ending was a little abrupt,” Zach told him with a little glare. “So I

thought I should drop by and finish our conversation.”

“Sorry,” Zorian winced. “I know ending things so suddenly was a jerk move, but I was already kind of

depressed from what the Guardian was saying and you getting into a one-sided shouting match with

the thing was…”

“It’s fine,” Zach said, waving him away. “I lost my nerves too. It’s probably for the best you shut me

down before I did something stupid. That thing seemed pretty uncaring, but if anyone can manage to

piss off a non-sapient spell construct, it’s me.”

“Zorian, who is that?” Mother suddenly said, walking up to them. Turning around, Zorian could also

see Kirielle peering from behind the kitchen door as well, watching the situation unfold.

“It’s just Zach,” Zorian said. “He’s one of my classmates from Cyoria.”

“Oh my, Zorian finally has friends visiting him at home,” Mother noted in exaggerated mirth. “I never

thought I’d see the day. Could I get an introduction?”

“Sure,” Zorian agreed. It was only polite. “Mother, this is Zach Noveda, a friend and a classmate.

Zach, this is Cikan Kazinski, my mother. The little girl peering from behind the door is my little sister,

Kirielle.”

Mother gave Kirielle an annoyed glare and gestured her to come over and introduce herself properly.

Huffing slightly at the order, Kirielle approached and shook hands with Zach as proper manners

dictated.

“What, no Fortov?” Zach asked with a whisper.

Mother always had good hearing, though, so she ended up hearing anyway.

“He’s at his friend’s place right now. He’ll meet us at the train station, so you can see him there. I

assume you intend to take a train to Cyoria along with Zorian, yes?”

“Yes. The train. Of course,” Zach fumbled, giving Zorian a questioning glance. He had probably

expected them to just excuse themselves and teleport to Cyoria.

“I decided to take Kirielle with me to Cyoria this time,” Zorian said. “I hope you don’t mind her

travelling with us.”

Kirielle gave Zach the hardest look she could muster, daring him to disagree with her coming along.

“Err, right. Of course I’m okay with that,” said Zach.

What followed was about twenty minutes of Mother trying to talk Zach into accepting something to

drink and fishing for information about him. Zach decided not to mention he was the last living heir of

a Noble House, possibly because he still remembered what Zorian had told him about his mother,

and simply described himself as a wealthy orphan from Cyoria. Based on the looks Mother gave

him, however, Zorian was pretty sure she suspected the truth. She was quite perceptive about these

sorts of things.

Eventually, the four of them packed up and left towards Cirin’s train station.

“How come Zach doesn’t have any luggage to carry along?” Kirielle protested, glaring at the bag of

her own things that Mother had forced her to carry herself.

“Well, I’m from Cyoria to begin with,” Zach said with a grin. “My luggage is already there.”

“Unfair…” she mumbled.

“Oh, you’ll see unfair when we get to Cyoria,” Zorian told her. “There’s an hour walk from the train

station to where we’ll be staying, and I heard it’s going to rain too…”

When they finally reached the train station, they found Fortov already there, talking to his friends.

Mother insisted on introducing Zach to him, which annoyed Zorian far more than it probably should

have.

“No offense, Zorian, but your family seems pretty nice to me thus far,” Zach told him later, when he

finally managed to excuse himself from Fortov’s group. “Maybe I’m a little biased, since my family all

died and I wish I actually had a family… but I honestly can’t figure out your animosity for them.”

“It’s personal,” Zorian told him in a clipped tone. “There’s a lot of history that you aren’t aware of.

Just drop it.”

“Fine, whatever,” Zach sighed. “I don’t want to start a fight. I actually want to apologize.”

Zorian gave him a strange look.

“Apologize?” Zorian asked curiously. “What for?”

“Well, you mentioned last time how I keep up a mind blank around you at all times and how it means

I don’t trust you…”

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” Zorian told him, shaking his head. “I also told you I would

have done the same in your place, remember?”

“No offense, but I don’t want to be like you, Zorian,” Zach said, shaking his head. Well screw you

too, Zach! The feeling was mutual! “The point is, you were right. We don’t trust each other, and we’re

not going to get anywhere if we have that constantly hanging over our heads. We need to work

together if we want to have any chance of getting out of here.”

Well, that wasn’t quite what he said, but since Zorian actually agreed with the sentiment, he didn’t

interrupt.

“So anyway, I think you already noticed I’m not under the effect of mind blank…” Zach said.

“Of course,” Zorian nodded. “I do notice your mind is still shielded, though.”

“Well yeah,” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “Trust your neighbors but lock your door, you know?”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Zorian said. “I was just going to notice the shield doesn’t feel like a spell.

That’s a non-structured mental defense, yes?”

“Of course you already tested it,” Zach sighed. “Goddamn mind-readers. But yes, it’s non-structured.

I got it a long time ago, back in the first decade of my looping.”

“It’s… kind of rough for something you’ve been practicing for decades,” Zorian admitted. “I mean, I

know it’s hard to practice non-structured mind magic when you aren’t psychic like me, but I’ve seen

other regular mages with similar defenses and theirs were a lot better than this.”

“I never really refined it much since… well, I never needed it for anything more complex than

resisting casual mind reading and the like,” Zach said. “This isn’t just me being lazy, mind you. This

is pretty much conventional wisdom about non-structured mental defenses among mages. Or at

least that’s what the various magic instructors I learned from told me. Get just enough skill in the

ability to foil casual attacks and deal with anything more severe with proper defensive wards and the

like. If you don’t have time to set up those, locate the source of the mental attack and go on the

offensive. Or just outright flee from the scene. Most mages agree that fancy non-structured mental

defenses are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Well, I’m kind of biased, but I don’t agree,” Zorian said.

“Yes, I feel a bit stupid now for just accepting conventional wisdom when it comes to that,” Zach

admitted. “I’ve been stuck in a time loop for decades, it’s not like I didn’t have the time. I’ve honed far

more useless skills to perfection just for bragging rights, so I really shouldn’t have skimped out on

something like this. But enough of that. I have a request for you.”

“Go ahead,” Zorian nodded, motioning him to continue.

“Don’t mess with my mind without my express permission,” Zach said. “Even if you catch me without

any mental protection or something.”

“Well, okay,” Zorian agreed. “I can respect that. What if I suspect you to be under the influence of

another mind mage already, though?”

“I… have to think about that,” Zach fumbled. “For now, no. Don’t mess with my mind even then. Just

knock me out and wait for the effect to wear off.”

Zorian wanted to point out that some mind effects didn’t ‘wear off’, but he could see that Zach was

still very uncomfortable around mind magic and decided to postpone this talk for some other time.

“Alright. I’ll leave your mind alone. I will only use my mind sense and empathy on you, since they

require no mental invasion to use and it’s almost impossible for me to not use them on someone.

Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Zach said. “The fact you can sense and manipulate the marker placed on us and I can’t

really burns, you know? I can accept you’re a better mind mage than I’ll ever be since it’s your

special ability and all, but this personal soul sense of yours is something I could have easily acquired

myself if I knew about it. Do you think you can teach me how to do that?”

“I think I’ll have to set you up with one of my teachers to do that,” Zorian frowned. “Alanic has access

to potions I have never even encountered elsewhere and knowledge of how to help if something

goes horribly wrong. I don’t think it’s going to be too much of a problem, though – he’s a pretty

helpful person, despite initial appearances.”

Eventually the train arrived and they were forced to cut their conversation a little short. Since they

were going to share a compartment with Kirielle for the rest of the ride, any sensitive conversations

would have to wait for a while.

Even if they had wanted to talk about something arcane, though, Kirielle wouldn’t have let them. Any

apprehension she felt towards Zach melted away during the first twenty minutes of the train ride and

the resulting boredom. She started asking Zach questions about Cyoria and the academy. Later on,

Zach would remark how surprised he was at the way Kirielle treated him, as Kirielle had been rather

more unfriendly towards him in the previous restart. But, as Zorian explained to him, that Kirielle was

one who had a far worse impression of Zach… and that bad first impression of Zach had never really

left her for the rest of the restart. The way Kirielle was treating him now was actually far closer to her

true personality than what he experienced before.

“Kind of strange that you don’t like most of your family, but you’re so close to your little sister,” Zach

remarked. “Was it always like that, or…?”

“I always did like her best out of all of them,” Zorian said. “But no, I did not have this good of a

relationship with her before the time loop. There was a reason why I had never brought her along

before I started retaining my awareness across restarts.”

“Ah. I figured it was something like that,” Zach said. “So do we have a plan for this restart or what?”

“I was hoping we could take a break for a restart or two,” Zorian sighed. “I need to think about things

and come to terms with all of this. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Hmm… fine,” Zach said eventually. “I guess we should spend some time getting to know each other

anyway. You can still introduce me to that Alanic fellow that teaches personal soul sensing, right?”

“Absolutely,” Zorian confirmed. “You can work on your soul sense while we decide what to do. It’s

not like I intend to literally do nothing myself, you know.”

“Oh? What do you have in mind for yourself?” Zach asked.

“I’ve been pursuing lessons from my mentor, Xvim, but I could never really properly focus on them

thus far. Now that I don’t have the decaying memory packet in my head demanding most of my

attention, I figure I should finally be able to give him all my attention and see what the results are. I’m

still not sure how much to really tell him about the time loop and how it functions, though. I

mean, I’m freaked out by how it works, and I’m actually aware of the restarts… I’m not sure it’s a

good idea to explain to Xvim what’s really going on.”

“I can’t help you there,” Zach shook his head. “I never had much luck in convincing people about the

time loop, and that was before I knew all this crazy stuff about it that I do now. I have no idea how

you even convinced Xvim to take you seriously about time travel, considering he never believed me

when I tried to do the same.”

“You went to Xvim to try and tell him about the time loop?” Zorian asked. “I guess you really meant it

when you said you went to just about everyone with the story.”

“Yeah…” Zach agreed. “Do you think it might help you convince him you’re telling the truth if I came

with you? I can do some pretty crazy magic on demand, by now…”

“I don’t know,” Zorian said. “I didn’t mention you when I talked to him previously, but that was mostly

to minimize any links between the two of us in case Red Robe somehow caught wind of Xvim’s

investigation in the time loop. Now that we know Red Robe is gone, it might be a good idea to

include you into the story.”

Zorian considered things for a few seconds.

“I’ll go alone on Monday,” Zorian decided. “But I’ll tell him you’re also a time traveler and see if he

wants to meet you.”

- break -

Of course Xvim wanted to meet him. Frankly, if Zorian was in Xvim’s place and a student came to

him with a story about being a time traveler and then another student was also a time traveler, he’d

react the same way too. Thus, the very next day after Zorian’s talk with Xvim, he returned to the

man’s office with Zach in tow.

“So, Mister Noveda,” Xvim began. “Mister Kazinski here claims you and he are stuck in a… ‘time

loop’, and have lived through this month many times before. You’ve lived longer than him,

apparently. I’ve already heard Mister Kazinski’s story and saw the evidence he had for it, and now

I’m curious to hear your side of it. But before we get to that, I admit I’m curious about your level of

skill. Do you mind if we take an hour or two to test your magical abilities?”

“Sure,” Zach shrugged. “I guess we’re going to have to leave the office for that, though…”

“That won’t be necessary, mister Noveda,” Xvim told him. “The test will consist of simple shaping

exercises.”

“Shaping exercises?” Zach asked, surprised. “Err, kind of underwhelming, but okay. Ready when

you are.”

Oh dear. Should Zorian warn him?

No. No, it would be more amusing this way.

“Levitate this pen, please,” Xvim told Zach, handing him one of the many pens strewn along his

desk. “And then make it spin in the air.”

Zach smiled, doing just that with total ease…

…at which point a marble nailed him straight in his forehead, causing him to lose concentration and

stop levitating the pen, nevermind spinning it.

“…what?” Zach asked incredulously.

“You failed,” Xvim informed him, finger tapping against the table impatiently.

“But… you threw a marble at me!” Zach protested.

“And you immediately lost concentration,” Xvim said with a long sigh. “Shameful. And you’re

supposed to be someone who trained magic for literally decades? What could you have possibly

been doing all this time? Zorian here would have never let some little thing like that distract him, and

he has only been stuck in the time loop for a few years.”

There was a long pause as Zach looked incredulously between Xvim and Zorian, as if unable to

believe what he was hearing.

Zorian was struggling not to laugh. He could kind of understand why Xvim had done this – it was an

asshole move, and completely inappropriate for a teacher, but damn if it wasn’t amusing.

“Well, I suppose it’s to be expected,” Xvim said. “Decades of shoddy instruction is nonetheless

shoddy instruction. One more promising student failed by the poor state of our magical education.

Let’s try that again, only properly this time. Start over…”

- break -

“I hate this guy,” Zach told him as they left Xvim’s office. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to strangle

someone more in my entire life.”

“Yeah, Xvim has that kind of effect on people,” Zorian agreed.

“I mean, I knew he was an asshole, but I never quite realized he was that… that much of an asshole.

You know?”

Yes, he knew. Oh, how Zorian knew…

“If he’s always like that, then why the hell did you keep coming back to him restart after restart?”

Zach asked incredulously.

“I wanted to prove him wrong,” Zorian shrugged. “He was an ass, but he was demanding excellence

in something I’d always felt I was good at, and so I just couldn’t let it go. Besides, he’s not utterly

terrible, once you get to know him a little.”

“Not utterly terrible,” Zach repeated, rolling his eyes. “I really hope this is the end of it and I never

have to talk to the guy again.”

“You know, Xvim is pretty good at non-structured mental defenses,” Zorian said innocently.

“No,” Zach said immediately.

“What?” Zorian grinned. “I was just going to suggest you ask him for help in mastering the ability. I’m

sure he’d be happy to help you train.”

“No. Absolutely not,” Zach shook his head. “And don’t think I didn’t notice how much you were

enjoying yourself while I suffered in there. I’ll find a way to pay you back somehow, you’ll see.”

Rather than be intimidated by the threat, Zorian finally laughed.

Chapter 056

Obscure

Despite how much the experience had annoyed Zach, Zorian judged their meeting with Xvim to have

been a full success. Sure, Xvim had been openly dismissive of Zach’s skills, but that was just Xvim

being Xvim. The man had been impressed in his own way, else he would not have kept pushing

Zach towards ever more demanding shaping exercises as their meeting progressed. Not that this

outcome was surprising – there was a lot to be impressed about when it came to Zach’s shaping,

especially if one knew how big his mana reserves were. His fellow time traveler had not honed his

shaping skills to the same ridiculous standard that Zorian had achieved under Xvim’s tutelage, but

he was clearly far better than he had any right to be. Zorian was confident that the skills Zach

displayed in that office would be taken as a point in their favor.

The next day, Zorian decided to introduce Zach to Alanic as well and see if the priest was open to

the idea of teaching Zach some of his soul defenses. Accordingly, they went to the priest first thing in

the morning, effectively skipping an entire day of classes. Not that skipping classes was much of a

problem for either of them at this point.

The start of the meeting went about as Zorian expected it would. Zach talked, Alanic listened, and

Zorian mostly stayed quiet. The priest already knew the nature of their request, since Zorian had

already explained things to him while arranging the meeting, but he wanted to hear Zach’s version of

the story as well before he agreed to anything. Thankfully, Zach successfully kept to the script and

didn’t blurt out anything he wasn’t supposed to.

Their story was, in essence, very simple: the two of them had ended up on the receiving end of a

soul magic attack and now had some kind of marker stamped on their soul. Zach, being shaken by

the experience, now wanted to learn how to defend himself from similar attacks.

“There is one thing that is bothering me about this,” Alanic told them when Zach finished his tale,

shifting his attention from Zach to Zorian. “If both of you suffered from this attack, how come only

Zach is interested in learning how to defend his soul? Does the experience you went through not

worry you as well?”

“Ah, well, I already know how to perceive and defend my soul,” Zorian admitted.

“Really?” Alanic said curiously, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

“Why would I lie?” asked Zorian with a shrug.

Alanic stared at him for a second before reaching across the table they were gathered around and

grasping his shoulder tightly in his hand. Zorian was about to ask him what the hell he thought he

was doing when suddenly all of his senses went haywire.

He swayed in his chair for a moment, the world around him spinning and melting like a bad illusion

and his body feeling like it was being twisted into some unnatural form. Then he realized what was

happening and used his magic to violently shove Alanic’s attack away from his soul. It worked, and

the world immediately returned to normal, but Zorian had an uncomfortable feeling that had more to

do with Alanic backing off at the first sign of resistance than him being all that good.

He gave the man a nasty glare, and Alanic removed his hand from Zorian’s shoulder.

“Shoddy defenses,” Alanic said. “Serviceable, but shoddy. You should reconsider you decision,

mister Kazinski. You could use my instruction as much as mister Noveda here.”

“I know that!” Zorian snapped. “I just thought…”

…that Alanic would refuse to teach him, since he didn’t want to do so in previous restarts. Well, not

without receiving explanations that Zorian had been unwilling to give the man at that time.

Hmm.

“You know what? Nevermind that,” Zorian sighed. “Does that mean you’re willing to teach us, then?

Both of us?”

“I suppose I am,” Alanic said, tapping his fingers against the table for a few seconds. “You are hiding

things from me, but I don’t think it’s something sinister. Who taught you how to feel your soul, if I

may ask?”

“A friendly shifter,” said Zorian.

Partially true, even if Alanic had done the lion’s share of the work.

“A shifter, huh?” Alanic said, giving him another long look. “Very well. Come with me so I can check

up on this marker you two received from your attacker.”

“Err, we don’t want it removed,” Zach hurriedly said.

“Yes, you already said that,” Alanic said. “I just want to have a look. Don’t worry, I’m not doing

anything to you without your consent.”

“You mean like launching a surprise soul attack to test our claims of already having a soul defense?”

asked Zorian snidely.

“Don’t be so whiny,” Alanic told him unsympathetically. “That was just a light tap, spiritually

speaking.”

“That ‘light tap’ almost caused me to vomit all over your table,” Zorian told him.

“Hmph,” Alanic scoffed. “Your defenses are even shoddier than I thought, then.”

Sighing, Zorian decided to drop the issue.

“What is it with you and annoying teachers?” Zach whispered to him as they followed Alanic deeper

into the temple that served as his house. “Is this going to be a recurring thing with you? I don’t think I

can handle a repeat of the Xvim episode this soon.”

Zorian was tempted to bring Zach to Silverlake after this, just to show him the true meaning of

annoying. At least Alanic and Xvim were each helpful in their own way in addition to being hard to

deal with. He wondered if Zach was good enough to deal with the grey hunter… he probably could

kill the beast, but could he do it in a way that keeps the eggs intact?

Though now that he thought about it, Silverlake probably doesn’t count as a teacher. She had taught

him precisely nothing so far.

“Mister Zosk is way less annoying than Xvim,” he whispered back to Zach, putting his musings aside

for the moment. “He can be pretty harsh at times, but he’s always fair. He doesn’t insult people

without good reason. The truth is my soul defenses really are shoddy at the moment. Give him a

chance.”

“I’m happy you have so much faith in me, mister Kazinski,” Alanic said, butting into their

conversation. Oops, guess they weren’t quiet enough. Or maybe Alanic’s hearing was just that good.

“This Xvim fellow you keep talking about sounds fascinating. I hope you can introduce us sometime.”

Zorian made a sour face. Bringing Xvim and Alanic together into the same room? Yeah, no way in

hell was he letting that happen…

Alanic seemed to have noticed Zorian’s distaste for the idea because he actually laughed at him.

“I was just joking, mister Kazinski,” the priest said, his voice still tinged with amusement. “If I really

wanted to meet this ‘Xvim’, I would have sought him out on my own. With a name like that, I doubt

he’d be hard to find.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Zorian admitted. ‘Xvim’ was a fairly exotic name, and he had a feeling that

his mentor was rather famous within certain circles as well. Everyone who worked in a prestigious

institution like Cyoria’s Royal Magical Academy was at least somewhat famous. All in all, Xvim

probably wasn’t very hard to find for someone like Alanic, who clearly had connections to one or

more spy organizations.

Not for the first time, Zorian found himself wondering what exactly would happen if he told Alanic

about the time loop. Not in this restart, obviously, but as an idea for the future… well, he could use

the battle-priest’s help and advice.

Then again, he wasn’t working alone anymore, was he? He would have to see what Zach would say

about that.

Oh well. Hopefully Alanic would leave a better impression on Zach than Xvim had.

- break -

“Ugh,” Zach said as they departed from Alanic’s home. “That psychedelic potion is pure hell. And I’m

apparently going to have to go through several restarts worth of that stuff?”

“You didn’t have to take it,” Zorian pointed out. “Its only purpose is to speed things up. You could

have taken the slow, painless way and meditated your way to soul perception.”

“No, I know my limits,” Zach said, shaking his head. “Even you opted for the ‘fast’ route, and I’m

even more impatient than you are. How you managed to pretend to be unaware of the time loop all

this time I’ll never fathom… What did he have you do while I was off hallucinating, anyway?”

“That ‘light touch’ stuff he tried on me earlier,” grimaced Zorian. “He kept using weak soul attacks on

me while having me fight him off. It’s helpful, I guess. At the very least it gives me some experience

in fending off soul manipulation. I usually rely on actual defensive wards to counter hostile soul

magic, but this sort of stuff is useful if I’m ever caught off-guard with some casual soul spell. It’s

strange, though. Why is Alanic willing to help me refine my soul defenses now that I’ve brought you

along? Why does your presence make him less suspicious of me?”

“I guess I just look like a more honest person than you do,” Zach said with a grin. Zorian rolled his

eyes at him. “Anyway, what now?”

“Now? Well, you either go home and do whatever you want, or you go with me to Knyazov Dveri

while I visit the local dungeon,” Zorian told him. “I was going to go there while you had your lessons

with Alanic, but that idea obviously had to be scrapped, so I guess I’ll do it now.”

“You were going to go have fun in the dungeon while I suffered back there?” Zach frowned.

“Depends how you define fun,” Zorian said. “I’m just going to load up on crystalized mana before

getting back to the surface.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Zach said. “Why would you need so much crystalized mana?”

“Money, of course,” Zorian said. “I use some of it for my magic items and golems, but most of it is

sold for some quick cash. I memorized where the crystal clumps are over the restarts, so it doesn’t

take long to pick up a lot of them. It’s almost like collecting money.”

Zach was quiet for a while.

“Well crap,” said Zach after a while. “That’s clever. Why didn’t I think of that? I could have used that

trick a decade or so ago…”

“What, you had cash problems?” Zorian asked curiously. “Aren’t you obscenely rich?”

“I don’t have nearly as much money as people think,” Zach shook his head. Oh, right, his guardian

kind of robbed him. “Hell, I don’t have nearly as much money as I thought I did, thanks to my slimy

caretaker. But the real problem is that most of my money is unavailable to me. It’s all either banked

into long-term accounts or stored away in ways that make it really hard for me to get to it on short

notice. And even if I could get to it easily, I would still have to justify my expenses to my caretaker

and get his permission in order to spend any significant sum. Which means that when I really wanted

to spend a lot of money during the restarts, I basically had to get the money from scratch

somehow…”

“Hmm. And how did you solve that?”

“Well, these days I just kill some rare magical creature and sell the corpse,” Zach shrugged. “You

can earn huge amounts of cash if you know who to sell it to. I really like your solution, though. It’s a

lot safer, and not even that much more time consuming. Doesn’t dumping a huge amount of

crystalized mana on the market collapse the price, though?”

Zorian shook his head. “In the grand scheme of things, the amounts of crystalized mana I can gather

in a few days are a drop in the bucket. Even if I focused on doing nothing else for the entire restart,

I’d only produce a fraction of what dedicated mines produce on a daily basis. Though trying to sell

too much to individual shops does tend to bring unwanted attention.”

“Alright,” Zach nodded. “So how are we doing this?”

- break -

Later that day, when they finally returned to Cyoria, Zorian was lugging no less than five luggage

boxes full of crystalized mana – a lot more than his excursions into the dungeons beneath Knyazov

Dveri usually got him. They probably went a little overboard with their crystal collection, but that was

fine. One could never have too much money.

Zorian usually stuck to the safer areas of the dungeon he had mapped and explored a long time ago

when embarking on his crystal gathering expeditions, but Zach had insisted they explore the

dungeon a little deeper than usual this time. Since the other time traveler was so powerful, Zorian

had agreed. He was actually somewhat curious if they could find something interesting. In the end,

though, they didn’t discover anything too amazing – just several new crystal clumps and some

strange cave plants that Zorian couldn’t identify and decided to bring along with him. He could then

show them to Kael when the boy finally showed up again. They didn’t stumble upon anything

particularly dangerous, which pleased Zorian (who didn’t want to end the restart short because they

died to some stupid monster in the dungeon depths) and disappointed Zach (who had been hoping

for a good fight to blow off some steam).

Just as they were about to separate and go each to their own homes, Zach suddenly spoke up.

“That was kind of fun,” he said. “We should go deeper next time.”

“That’s a bad idea,” Zorian said. “We already went past the depth where I met this floating mass of

eyes that killed me just by looking at me. It’s only luck we didn’t meet anything like that today. Do

you really want to cut one of our restarts short by dying to some stupid monster?”

“Ugh. You’re no fun,” Zach complained.

“We can always go hunting all the monsters that are terrorizing the city now that aranea are gone,”

Zorian pointed out. “I already did that with Taiven in previous restarts, but… well, I can never really

set myself loose when I’m around her. She knows me too well to accept my growth in skill at face

value.”

“Taiven. I remember her,” Zach said. “She was your date for the evening that time when I invited all

the students to my home for the summer festival. Are you close to her?”

“Not in the way you’re probably thinking of. We’re just friends,” Zorian said.

“Friends that go on dates together?” Zach said with a grin.

Ugh.

“I’m pretty sure I told you something like this back then, but Taiven isn’t interested in guys like me.

I’m not her type,” Zorian responded, hoping this was the end of it.

Yeah, fat chance of that.

“Ah, so she shot you down then,” Zach nodded sagely. “Well, don’t let it get to you. You can’t get to

them all, even with the time loop and its multiple retries. I never managed to talk either Raynie or

Akoja to go out on a date with me, for example, no matter what I tried…”

Zorian was sorely tempted to ask Zach about his attempts to woo Akoja, since that was bound to

have been amusing, in a train-wreck sort of way. In the end, however, he decided that he really

didn’t want to know.

“I hope you realize that I’ve been in this time loop for only a handful of years and that most of that

time has been spent while under threat and under pressure from various ‘emergencies’,” Zorian told

him.

“Yes, so?” Zach asked, not understanding his point.

“Aside from picking a girl for the date at the end of the restart, I never went out on any dates,” Zorian

told him. Did his meetings with Raynie count as dates? No, probably not. “I certainly didn’t go after

every single girl in the class like you seem to have done.”

Zach stared at him in silence for a few seconds, apparently struck speechless at Zorian’s statement.

“Seriously?!” he eventually asked, his voice incredulous.

“Seriously,” Zorian confirmed.

“You’re crazy,” Zach told him. “Mark my words, you’ll regret this once we’re out of this time loop.

You’ll never get a chance like this in your life!”

“You sound like an old man,” Zorian said.

“Well, I am several decades older than you,” Zach pointed out. “Listen to your elders, young man, I

know what I’m talking about…”

Ten minutes and a lot of pointless banter later, they finally called it a day and separated. Strangely

enough, despite the fact he spent the entire day either having his soul slapped around, crawling

through dark, monster-infested tunnels or being teased by his fellow time traveler, Zorian found

himself happy with how it turned out.

Though he really could have gone without that last conversation – now he couldn’t stop thinking

about the various girls in his life.

And he was certain that if Zach knew about it, he would be laughing at his predicament.

The jerk.

- break -

Two days after their meeting with Xvim, the man called Zorian in his office to tell him that he had

tentatively accepted his story as plausible and to talk about what they should do next. That was…

surprisingly fast. It was interesting to experience just how big of an effect Zach’s presence had on

people he talked to. Both Xvim and Alanic seemed to be taking him more seriously this time around,

just because there was a second person backing his story up. Was it just that multiple people were

convincing in a way that a single person wasn’t, or was there more to it?

He was tempted to ask Xvim about the topic directly, but it was unlikely he could offer much insight

into the thought processes of his previous incarnations and would force him to admit he was

purposely restricting Xvim’s access to relevant information about the time loop.

Regardless, he currently found himself standing in front of Xvim on one of the Academy’s many

training grounds, waiting for the lessons to start.

“So,” Xvim said. “I see you are here alone. I take it your fellow time traveler declined my offer, then?”

“I’m afraid you didn’t leave the best impression on him the last time you met, sir,” Zorian told him

respectfully.

“A pity. He could have used my help. But enough about the easily discouraged – we’re here to help

you. You say you’ve already worked with me to hone your dimensionalism? Show me, then.”

Zorian didn’t have to ask what Xvim was talking about. He took out a large, oval rock from his jacket

pocket and outstretched his hand in front of him so Xvim could see the stone.

And then he generated a flawless dimensional boundary around the stone. Visually, nothing

happened… but Zorian knew Xvim could tell the difference somehow. He supposed that his ability to

sense magic was just that good.

“Passable,” Xvim said, passing his judgement. “Keep working on it in your free time, but I suppose I

can work with this.”

Zorian nodded, and quietly pocketed the stone, his long experience with Xvim allowing him to shrug

off his mentor’s ridiculous perfectionism without really getting upset. His dimensional boundary was

more than just ‘passable’ and they both knew it. Zorian had already started to work on forming a

dimensional boundary over complex objects like small statues and planned to move on to live,

moving insects soon.

“You seem to have rather good grasp on the basic teleport spell, and even know a great many

variants,” Xvim said. “So today I will show you how to defend against teleportation instead.”

“I already know how to ward places against teleportation,” pointed out Zorian.

“Truly?” Xvim said. “Let’s test that.”

He waved his hands, conjuring four glowing orbs of light that quickly assumed a square formation

over a large section of the training ground.

“Ward that area against teleportation, and then I’ll do my best to teleport in,” Xvim told him.

Shrugging, Zorian went and did just that. He was quite good at warding, in his humble opinion, but

he had no illusions that his wards would actually hold against Xvim’s attempts to sidestep it. Who

knows what kind of sophisticated teleportation spells his mentor had at his disposal?

There. Not his best work, perhaps, as he was slightly rushed for time and didn’t have any fancy

materials to work with, but that should at least force him to spend some time to-

Without saying a word, Xvim unceremoniously dispelled his teleportation ward with a wide-area

dispel and teleported into the previously warded area.

Though he knew it wouldn’t help, Zorian just couldn’t help himself. He just had to say it.

“That’s cheating,” he said. “You told me you were going to try to teleport in, not that you’d just dispel

the ward.”

“And an actual attacker would play by the rules, hmm?” Xvim asked him. “You don’t think they would

just teleport to the edge of the ward and get rid of it?”

“If you gave me time to prepare, the ward would be anchored to something and be nigh impossible

to dispel like that,” Zorian said.

“And if you gave me time to prepare I’d bring a couple of mana siphons to starve the ward into

collapse,” Xvim said pitilessly.

“Ugh. Fine. Can I have another try?” Zorian asked.

“Of course,” Xvim nodded. “You can have as many tries as you want.”

Two hours later and 5 ward refinements later, Zorian had a warding scheme that Xvim couldn’t just

casually dispel whenever he wished. He had to extend the ward far outside the limits of the area

indicated by Xvim’s glowing orbs, but apparently that wasn’t cheating either. The man even praised

him for ‘finally thinking outside the box’.

And then, when he finally couldn’t dispel the ward, Xvim promptly teleported into the area as if the

ward had never existed. Zorian wouldn’t have been so upset about that, except that Xvim didn’t

appear to have used anything more complex than a basic teleport to do so.

“What happened?” he asked the man. “How did you teleport in with just the regular teleport? There

are three stages of the basic teleport, and I made sure to suppress each and every one of them.”

“I made a microscopic dimensional gate and used it to extend a ward-suppressing bubble in the

middle of the area,” Xvim said. “Then I simply teleported into a patch of effectively unprotected land.

It is a standard way of getting into heavily-warded areas, though most people use magic items

thrown into the area instead of creating a microscopic gate like I did.”

“I presume this is because they can’t create a gate like that, even a tiny one,” Zorian said.

“Yes,” Xvim confirmed. “But I’m hardly unique in this capacity, so it would be best to know how to

deal with the tactic.”

“Fine,” Zorian said wearily. “I admit defeat, master. I don’t know how to ward against teleportation

effectively, so please teach me how. And if possible, I’d also like to know how to make the micro-

gate thing, too.”

“I suspect that level of skill is still beyond you, my student,” Xvim told him with a small smile. “But

we’ll see. Now listen closely…”

- break -

Days passed. Aside from getting lessons from both Alanic and Xvim, Zorian spent his time playing

games with Kirielle and creating experimental spell formula blueprints. He sought out Nora Boole’s

help for the latter task, discussing his designs with the enthusiastic woman that helped him start on

his current path so long ago. She was surprisingly helpful, even after all this time… though it did

bring him a bit more attention than he would have liked, since Nora couldn’t shut up about this

amazing spell formula talent she had found among the students. With Red Robe out of the picture,

however, he didn’t care as much about attracting attention.

He and Zach also went to hunt monsters that kept spilling into Cyoria a couple of times. Zorian

already knew where a lot of them made their nests and which paths they took to the surface, and

since he didn’t have to feign ignorance around Zach, they thinned out monster populations

considerably during those couple of visits to Cyoria’s underground. At Zorian’s request, Zach mostly

let Zorian tackle the monsters on his own, only getting himself involved when he had to. Which was

embarrassingly often, to Zorian’s annoyance – his combat skills were steadily growing, but he still

wasn’t a one man army like Zach was.

Eventually Kael arrived at Imaya’s place, and Zorian brought both him and Taiven into the time loop.

Kael was very easy to convince, like usual, but Taiven was still rather incredulous about the idea.

Then again, she always was rather hard to convince that he was telling the truth…

Currently he and Zach were just lazing around in an empty meadow, far from any settlement. Well,

any inhabited settlement. There was a small village nearby, but it had been completely depopulated

during the Weeping, and now the locals considered the entire area cursed and refused to move back

in. Zorian didn’t expect that to last for long, but for now the village remained empty and the fields

overgrown with grass.

Though the background of the place was rather morbid, it was a very beautiful location otherwise.

Zach had really found some nice sites in his decades of wandering the continent.

“So what was Kael being so excited about the other day?” Zach asked him. “I don’t remember him

being so excited about the time loop in the previous restart.”

“Well, since I no longer have to worry about keeping my head down to stay below Red Robe’s radar,

Kael decided he can conscript some of the local alchemists for that research he keeps transferring

across restarts,” Zorian said.

“That sounds very expensive,” Zach said, frowning.

“It probably will be,” Zorian said, nodding. “I’d be annoyed at him throwing my money around like

that, but in truth I really don’t have much use for most of it. Besides, I can always dip into other

sources of cash if I ever run out.”

“Other sources?” Zach asked.

“I know the locations of several secret stashes of the Ibasans and the cultists scattered around

Cyoria,” Zorian said. “And I can always rob their houses too, since I know where a lot of them live

and all.”

“But that’s stealing,” Zach protested.

“Yes?” Zorian confirmed, mystified at Zach’s response. “Why wouldn’t I steal from them? They’re a

bunch of murderous invaders.”

“Well… I guess it makes sense,” Zach admitted. “But it just feels wrong to me, you know?”

“But you didn’t feel uncomfortable helping me violently break into aranean settlements so we could

violate their minds for practice and skill theft?” Zorian asked curiously.

Zach winced. “I, uh… didn’t think of it that way. Besides, they’re giant spiders. It’s easier to justify

that sort of thing when I can’t read their body cues and they don’t bother to talk to me about it.”

“That’s because you had a mind blank on,” Zorian noted. “They literally couldn’t talk to you. They did

talk to me, though. They asked, even begged us to stop plenty of times.”

“Uh, wow,” said Zach awkwardly. “That’s… pretty messed up. I always did wonder why you were so

reluctant to go attack more than one colony each day…”

Zorian nodded silently. He wasn’t exactly dying of guilt over what they did, but that was one restart

he never intended to reenact in the future. There was no way he could keep doing that without

becoming a monster.

After a short silence, Zach spoke up again.

“You know, Zorian,” he said. “After watching you fight against the aranea in that restart and against

other monsters in this one, I couldn’t help but notice your combat magic is a little… basic.”

“I guess,” Zorian said slowly, wondering what the other boy was getting at.

“It’s not bad!” Zach hastened to add. “It’s pretty good, all things considered. But, well… I don’t think

it’s good enough for what we need to do.”

“Fair enough,” Zorian agreed. “I am working on it, though. I suppose you think I’m not doing

enough?”

“Actually, I was going to offer to teach you some more spells,” Zach grinned. “I’m not much of a

teacher, but I don’t have to be one in order to increase your arsenal of combat spells.”

There was no reason to say no – Zorian was always happy to learn more spells, especially restricted

ones like most combat spells. Of course, learning spells was not the same as being able to use them

effectively in combat, which was why Zorian still relied primarily on classics like magic missile, shield,

fireball and the like.

It quickly became obvious that many of Zach’s favorite tricks wouldn’t work well for Zorian. For

instance, Zach loved the shield variations that created multiple layers of force instead of a single

shielding plane – while extremely effective, they had extreme mana costs associated with them as

well. He also loved using spells in large swarms to overwhelm enemy defenses, which was likewise

an impractical tactic for Zorian.

Still…

“Okay then, this is one of those fancy hexagon shields you sometimes see in illustrations,” said

Zach, casting the spell deliberately slowly so Zorian could memorize the movements and chants. A

ghostly sphere made of interlocking hexagons sprung out around Zach. “I personally find it too much

of a chore, but it sounds like it can work well for someone like you. The main advantage is that if an

attack punches through, it will only destroy one hexagon instead of collapsing the entire shield.

Though this does make the shield as a whole somewhat weaker than the layered aegis I showed

you earlier. Hence me not using it much.”

“That does sound more suited to me,” Zorian admitted.

“We should probably stop for today,” Zach said, dismissing the shield. It promptly dissolved into

glittering motes of lights instead of simply winking out of existence like a regular shield did. Pretty.

“Yes,” Zorian agreed. “It’s best I spend some time experimenting with stuff you’ve already shown me

before I bother learning more new stuff.”

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help,” Zach said. “Hell, maybe one day you’ll even teach me something.”

Zorian cocked his eyebrow at him.

“Who says I can’t teach you something now?” he asked the boy.

“Eh, I meant something related to combat magic,” Zach clarified, waving his hand through the air

dismissively.

“So did I,” Zorian immediately countered.

“Zorian, please,” Zach snorted derisively. “Combat magic is my thing. I’ve been working on it for

decades now. Even if you know some obscure spell I’ve never encountered, I probably already have

something better in my arsenal. Any feat of combat magic you can do, I can either duplicate or

exceed.”

“Hmm,” Zorian hummed thoughtfully. “That calls for a little test, I think. Do you think you’re up to it?”

“Sure,” Zach shrugged. “What do you have in mind?”

“See that rock over there?” Zorian said, pointing at a large stone some distance away from them.

Zach motioned for Zorian to continue. “Keep an eye on it while I cast my spell.”

“Alright,” Zach said, retreating to a healthy distance and positioning himself so he could easily see

both Zorian and the stone at the same time.

Slowly and carefully, Zorian went through the motions of the spell. Zach looked torn between

confusion and amusement, since the spell was clearly just a magic missile, but said nothing and

opted to just watch instead.

Zorian finished the spell. For a second, nothing seemed to happen.

Then the rock Zorian designated as his target exploded into a shower of stone fragments, causing

Zach to flinch in surprise at the sudden, unexpected detonation.

“What?” he asked uncomprehendingly. He gave Zorian a suspicious glance. “Did you put an

explosive glyph on that stone beforehand or something?”

“Nope,” Zorian said, grinning widely. “I cast an invisible magic missile at it.”

“Invisible magic missile?” Zach asked slowly.

“Didn’t you know?” Zorian asked innocently. “A flawlessly cast force spell is perfectly transparent,

making it effectively invisible. It took me quite a while to achieve this, but I’m sure a master combat

mage like yourself has mastered this years ago.”

Zach stared at him for a second before shifting his gaze to the shattered rock the magic missile had

demolished.

“So,” Zorian began, smiling brightly. “How long do you think it will take you to duplicate that?”

- break -

Three days later, Zorian was kind of regretting one-upping Zach like he did. Ever since then, his

fellow time traveler seemed obsessed with duplicating Zorian’s feat, refusing to understand that this

wasn’t something you could achieve by working on it really hard for a couple of days.

“I’m not even sure why you’re so upset about this,” Zorian finally told him. “It’s just a neat trick that

people like you have no need for anyway.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Zach said, casting another magic missile at the tree in front of him.

Zorian didn’t think the poor plant would last long if this continued for long. “I’m the combat guy. It’s

my thing, and I’ve been at this for decades longer than you! I can’t let you outdo me in this area.”

Zorian sighed at the explanation. He was getting uncomfortable flashbacks to Taiven’s little episode

when she figured out how good of a combat mage he is. Was this a general combat mage thing?

Well, at least Zach was not crying over it like Taiven had… that would have been really awkward.

“At least let me show you how to do it properly,” Zorian said. “You’ll never succeed by going at it in

your current fashion.”

Zach stopped for a second, considering it, before shaking his head.

“Maybe if I still can’t figure it out in a few days,” he said. “I like to figure out these sorts of things on

my own.”

Oh well, he tried. With a helpless shrug, Zorian left Zach to his pointless attempts at brute-forcing a

problem that required finesse to solve.

Eventually Zach either ran out of mana or got sick of casting magic missile – probably just got sick of

it, considering his monstrous mana reserves – and decided to sit down next to Zorian for a while.

“Do you mind if I ask you a little about what you remember about the start of the time loop?” Zorian

asked after a while.

“Feel free,” Zach shrugged. “But keep in mind that the beginning of the time loop is very fuzzy in my

mind and I keep having trouble remembering specific things about it.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Zorian nodded. “But I’ve been thinking about what you’ve said, both

recently and back when you still thought I was unaware of the time loop…”

“That was an asshole thing for you to do,” said Zach, interrupting him. “I know I’ve said it before, but

it bears repeating.”

“You’re never going to shut up about it, are you?” Zorian complained.

“Nope,” Zach confirmed.

“Anyway,” Zorian said, deciding there was no point in continuing that topic, “I remember you

mentioning how you kept trying to convince everyone who would listen about the existence of the

time loop. What was your logic behind that?”

“I found myself in some crazy time loop and there was an invasion of the city at the end of every

month,” Zach said. “Of course I wanted some help.”

“So just to confirm…” Zorian tried. “Your earliest memories are of being confused by the situation

you found yourself in, yes? The time loop was strange and novel to you, not something that felt

natural?”

Zach frowned, lost in thought for a while.

“Yeah,” Zach nodded. “Sounds about right. It doesn’t feel like the time loop was something I was

informed of in advance or specifically groomed for, if that’s what you’re asking. I guess that’s a point

in favor of Red Robe being the true Controller, huh?”

“Him being the original Controller still makes no sense to me,” Zorian said. “Why would he tolerate

you all this time if you weren’t somehow critical for the loop? Do you remember ever experiencing a

time loop being cut short for no apparent reason?”

“No,” Zach said. “I would have remembered something that abnormal. I did experience a few

unexpected restarts while sleeping, but I’m pretty sure those were due to assassinations.”

“Hmm. I doubt Red Robe never died prematurely, so that means the time loop only resets when you

die. That’s a pretty obvious indicator it considers you more important than the two of us.”

They continued discussing the issue for another ten minutes of so, with no solid conclusions by the

end. Eventually they shifted to the topic of how to convince people around them they really were in a

time loop and Zach started sharing some of his more amusing failures in his initial quest for allies…

“You told Benisek that you’re a time traveler?” Zorian asked incredulously. “I can’t believe you

thought that was a good idea.”

“Shut up,” Zach said. “Aren’t you friends with the guy?”

“Eh, sort of,” Zorian admitted. “But I’m afraid our friendship didn’t quite survive the time loop and its

influence on me. I kind of feel bad, since it’s not his fault he can’t learn and grow like I do, but…”

“You don’t have to explain that to me,” Zach said. “I used to be casual friends with a lot of our

classmates, but I feel completely alienated from most of them by now.”

“Right,” said Zorian. Best not to dwell on such a depressing topic. “So what exactly happened when

you told Benisek about the time loop?”

“I thought he took it quite well at first,” Zach said. “Then I came to school the day after and found that

he told half the school I’ve gone completely nuts. Though funnily, everyone seemed to have a

different idea of what kind of crazy thing I believed in…”

“Yeah, that sounds like Benisek,” Zorian nodded. “So when you said you tried to convince everyone,

you really meant everyone, huh?”

“Well, obviously I couldn’t try to convince literally everyone in Cyoria,” Zach said. “But it was a lot of

people. Students, teachers, city authorities, you name it.”

Zorian tapped his fingers against the ground around him, trying to think of some person from their

class whose reaction to the time loop would have been amusing. Oh!

“How about Veyers?” he asked Zach. “Did you ever tell him about the time loop?”

“Who?” Zach asked, looking confused.

“Veyers Boranova,” Zorian said. “You know, the guy who punched you in the face during class in our

second year? He got expelled from the academy before the time loop began, but he had technically

been our classmate, so I thought…”

He stopped when he noticed Zach was giving him a strange look.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Zorian… who the hell are you talking about?” Zach asked him slowly.

Zorian stared at Zach for a while, before he began to explain things in more detail.

“I’m talking about Veyers Boranova,” he said. “Member of Noble House Boranova and our classmate

during the first two years of our education. Tall, blond, and with vivid orange eyes that had a slitted

iris and made him look sort of like a snake. You two hated each other… well, just about everyone

hated the asshole, and he seemed to hate everyone around him, so I guess that doesn’t say much

but… Anyway, the point is that there is no way you could have forgotten the guy!”

Zach shifted in place uncomfortably.

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” he finally admitted.

Wow. Now that… that was very, very interesting.

Chapter 057

Unwanted

Zorian stared intently at the two sheets of paper in front of him, methodically going through every

single line of text and marking down the matches and differences between the two documents. Zach

sat beside him, watching him work with a thoughtful frown, not saying anything.

Despite the oppressive silence and serious mood, the two papers were simple lists of names.

Classmates, teachers, public officials… each of them had listed anyone they considered even

remotely important on their own sheet of paper, with no input from the other whatsoever. It was

Zorian’s hope that by comparing the two lists with each other, they could see if there were any other

obvious holes in Zach’s memory. Or Zorian’s memory, for that matter – it was unlikely, but Zorian

didn’t entirely discount the idea that his own mind had been tampered with too.

“Is this really necessary?” Zach asked him. “Maybe I just forgot the guy?”

Zorian looked up from the two papers to give Zach an incredulous look.

“Hey, I’m just saying!” Zach protested. “I mean, it has been a pretty long time since I’ve been stuck in

this time loop, and he was expelled before the time loop even began. I’d have to specifically seek

him out, and what reason did I have to do that? We apparently didn’t even like each other, if I

understood you correctly.”

“Please,” Zorian scoffed. There was no doubt in Zorian’s mind that Zach’s curious inability to

remember anything about Veyers Boranova was artificial in nature. “I can understand you putting the

jerk completely out of your mind. Hell, I pretty much did that myself. But to completely forget that he

existed at all and everything about him?”

Yet that was precisely what happened, if Zach was to be believed. Zorian could only conclude

someone had scrubbed Zach’s mind clean of everything related to the Boranova heir.

He wasn’t sure why Zach was so unwilling to accept that conclusion, though he did have his

suspicions…

Zorian returned to his task of matching names for a while, eventually stumbling onto a name on

Zach’s list that he was unfamiliar with. That was not very surprising, though – Zach’s list was way

longer than Zorian’s, as the other boy was far more social than he was.

“Who is this Ilinim Kam guy?” he asked Zach.

“He was a student in one of the other groups during our first two years in the academy,” Zach said.

“We used to hang out together sometimes. You weren’t very friendly back then, so that’s probably

why you don’t remember him. I don’t think you ever mingled with the other groups, did you?”

“No,” Zorian admitted. “I was always very busy back then. I barely interacted with my own

classmates, nevermind people I had no reason to talk to. Still, I did take a brief look at the other

groups, back when I was investigating our classmates for potential Red Robe candidates. I don’t

remember ever seeing any Ilinim Kam.”

“Well, I did say he was a student,” Zach pointed out. “He failed the certification exam and dropped

out of the academy.”

Well, that would explain it. He had completely ignored people who failed to advance into the third

year, thinking them irrelevant. That’s how he’d missed Veyers too, actually.

“We’re going to have to make a list of people like that and see if it holds any more surprises for us,”

Zorian noted. Scanning the names below Ilinim, he noticed quite a few names from other student

groups. “That said, I can’t help but notice that you know quite a few students outside our class…”

“I know what you’re getting at,” Zach interrupted him. “You’re going to point out how I can list half of

our year mates on demand but can’t remember a guy that went to our class.”

“And?” Zorian prodded. “Your response to that?”

“You’re right. There is definitely something abnormal about me forgetting this Veyers guy like that.

You happy now?” Zach said resignedly.

“Yes,” Zorian nodded. “Now tell me who this Anixa Pravoski girl is…”

For the next hour and a half, they slowly went through the two lists of names, searching for any

peculiarities. The good news was that Zach didn’t have any other glaring holes in his memories, as

far as Zorian could tell. Only Veyers seemed to be a total blank.

“So… do you think Veyers is Red Robe?” Zach asked cautiously.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Zorian said, taking off his glasses and inspecting them for dirt. It was

mostly a way to waste some time while he thought about what he wanted to say.

“Yes it is,” said Zach slowly, as if talking to an idiot. “So why don’t you try answering it.”

Ugh. So impatient.

“It’s possible,” Zorian said. “But I don’t know. I’m kind of bothered by some things about this.”

“Like what?” Zach asked curiously.

“Like the fact Veyers apparently wiped only himself out of your memory,” Zorian said. “That is so…

amateurish. I would expect more from Red Robe. I mean, if it was me doing something like this, I

would have blanked out your recollection of another four or five random students to muddy the trail a

bit.”

Zach gave him an unamused look.

“You know, Zorian, sometimes I can’t help but wonder if you’re actually Red Robe,” he said.

“You saw both of us in the same room, though,” Zorian pointed out, completely unconcerned by

Zach’s words.

“I already know Red Robe can make simulacrums, so that proves nothing,” Zach said, folding his

hands over his chest.

Zorian made a mental note to ask Zach to teach him how to cast the simulacrum spell, since it was

unlikely that Zach had never learned the spell in all the decades he had spent in the time loop and

Zorian really wanted the spell. They had more pressing issues at the moment, however, so he

reluctantly set the idea aside for the moment.

“The second thing that bothers me is that it’s hard to swallow that someone like Veyers could be the

relatively discreet and patient Red Robe,” Zorian said, dragging the conversation back to the topic of

Veyers. “I mean, he lost his temper at a disciplinary hearing, for gods’ sake! He is even more

impulsive than you are!”

“Hey…” Zach protested.

“Then again, neither of us are very similar to the person we used to be before the time loop, are

we?” admitted Zorian.

“There are plenty of similarities,” Zach said, shaking his head in disagreement. “But I do think that

him having a short fuse before the time loop proves little. You were also rather unpleasant to interact

with before the time loop, and look at you now…”

This was probably payback for Zorian’s earlier comment about Zach’s impulsiveness. He supposed

he did kind of deserve that…

“I had reasons for behaving like I did,” Zorian noted.

“Who says Veyers didn’t?” Zach asked. “I’m sure he felt his behavior was totally justified, too.”

That was true, Zorian conceded. In fact, it could be that the nature of the time loop removed most of

Veyers’ problems and allowed him to calm down. Much like it did for Zorian himself.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Zorian after a pause. He shook his head to clear his thoughts a little. “I

think that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter whether Veyers is Red Robe or not. The fact you have

no memory of him means he’s someone Red Robe didn’t want you to interact with, which makes him

automatically important. We have to check him out.”

“Oh, no argument about that,” Zach nodded. “Though this makes me wonder… if Veyers really is

Red Robe, what will we find when we track him down?”

“Depending on what method Red Robe used to leave the time loop, we would expect his counterpart

in this world to be either a soulless corpse like the aranea or an unaware person no different from

the rest of the people around us,” Zorian said.

“Why a soulless corpse?” Zach asked, baffled.

“Well, I’ve been thinking of the ways Red Robe could have tricked the Guardian into letting him out

of the time loop reality, and I realized he might have just asked for his soul to be shoved into his real

world body,” explained Zorian. “For a necromancer like him, it might be fairly trivial to just eject his

old soul out of the body and continue as normal from there.”

“Would the Guardian agree to do that, though?” Zach asked. “Can it even do that? It did claim it

would have to switch souls if the body in the real world already has one.”

“I can’t give you an answer to any of that, obviously,” Zorian huffed. “I don’t know enough about

either necromancy or the Guardian’s capabilities to say if it’s possible. It’s just an idea I’ve been

considering, that’s all.”

For a while, they kept throwing various possibilities at each other. It was all just wild speculation,

however, so they gave up on that discussion as pointless soon enough. They would have to wait

until they found Veyers before they could properly consider the issue.

A brief silence descended between them, each of them lost in their own thoughts.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take a look at your mind?” asked Zorian after a while.

“What?” Zach asked with incomprehension, jolted out of his musings by Zorian’s question. A second

later, when he finally processed the question, his face contorted into an annoyed glare. “No.

Absolutely not. I’m sorry, but I already had my brain scrambled by one mind mage and I don’t want

to be at the mercy of another. Besides, what would be the point? I may not be an expert on mind

magic like you, but even I know there is no way to restore magically erased memories. I’d be letting

you rummage through my mind for nothing.”

“Well, it’s true that a properly blanked out memory is irrecoverable,” Zorian admitted easily. “But why

assume Red Robe executed the mind wipe flawlessly? I saw his mind magic in action at one point,

when he tried to use it against me, and he wasn’t all that good with it. There is a good chance he

missed something.”

“You have a very skewed image of what constitutes as ‘good’ when it comes to mind magic,” Zach

told him. “It’s not Red Robe that’s bad, it’s you who is terrifyingly good at it. And the answer is still

no.”

“What if I tell you that you could still be under the magic’s influence?” Zorian asked.

Zach gave him a surprised look.

“What the hell do you mean by that!?” Zach asked him with a raised voice.

“It’s hard to believe you never encountered anyone mentioning Veyers in one of the previous

restarts,” Zorian pointed out with a sigh. “He’s not often mentioned, but people do talk about him on

occasion. At some point over the decades, you really should have noticed there was a guy everyone

in our class knew of, yet you have no memories of.”

“Well… I was only rarely in class after some point…” Zach tried.

“Zach, you’ve been strangely evasive about Veyers this entire time,” Zorian told him bluntly. “Hell,

not long ago you again floated the idea you may have just forgotten the guy. As if it hadn’t been

abundantly obvious by then that the guy had been purposely deleted out of your memories. I would

have expected you to be excited about discovering something so important, but instead you seemed

really keen to dismiss the whole thing.”

“Zorian, you’re overcomplicating things again,” Zach complained. “Please speak plainly.”

“Fine. You’re probably under some kind of compulsion not to focus on the topic of Veyers,” Zorian

said. “And possibly forget about it after a while, if it was ever forcibly pointed out to you. We’ll have to

see if you still remember this conversation tomorrow.”

“Don’t even joke about that last part, Zorian,” Zach warned him.

“It’s what I’d have done in Red Robe’s place,” Zorian said, shrugging. “But I have a feeling you don’t

have to worry about that. If Red Robe didn’t bother masking his memory wipe better, it’s likely that

he didn’t bother with something so relatively sophisticated. The compulsion to dismiss the topic itself

might have been enough, anyway. I mean, if it hadn’t been for me being so pushy and insistent

about the hole in your memory when it comes to Veyers, you’d have likely dismissed it and

eventually put it out of your mind.”

Zach hissed something under his breath that Zorian didn’t quite catch but which he was pretty sure

were insults and swear words directed at Red Robe. Something about his canine ancestry and

fondness for male genitals. Regardless, Zach spent the next several minutes pacing around the area

and muttering to himself.

He looked dangerously unstable, if Zorian was to be perfectly honest. And it wasn’t the first time

Zach had done something like that, either. It occurred to Zorian that all those decades Zach spent in

the time loop, with only limited ability to interact with other people, must have been harder on his

fellow time traveler than he had supposed.

How much worse, then, would he have ended up if the time loop worked as intended and he stayed

inside for hundreds of years or however long it was supposed to last? Maybe the Ghost Serpent was

onto something…

Finally, Zach stopped his pacing, ran his hand through his hair in a frustrated manner, and turned to

Zorian.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. “I really can’t, but I don’t seem to have a choice. Zorian?”

“Yes?” Zorian asked, curiously. Was Zach finally going to let him take a look at his mind? Probably,

he couldn’t imagine what else-

“I want you to bring me to Xvim again,” Zach said, a sour expression on his face. “I’m going to need

those mind magic lessons after all.”

“Oh,” Zorian said, blinking in surprise. He didn’t expect that. “Yeah. Sure.”

He wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed by this outcome. It wasn’t what he had been trying

to do by broaching the topic, but at least it was bound to bring plenty of amusement to him in the

days to come.

- break -

The next three days proved to be rather frustrating. On the bright side, Zach did not forget about

Veyers after a while, so any compulsion he might be laboring under did not extend that far.

Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ended. Their search for Veyers had gone nowhere. They

knew the boy’s name, what he looked like and where his home was, but they still couldn’t find him. In

the end Zach and Zorian blanketed the entire city with divinations, and they still couldn’t track him

down. Either Veyers was under some heavy anti-divination wards, or he was not anywhere near the

city of Cyoria.

To make matters worse, nobody seemed to know anything about the guy, not even the various

authorities. Zorian knew from questioning academy officials (and reading their minds when they

refused to give him an answer) that Veyers had never interacted with the academy again after his

expulsion, even though he was supposed to come and sign some documents to finalize things. The

academy sent a message to Veyers’ House to complain about that, but received no response

whatsoever. The police, for their part, received no report that the boy was dead or missing, despite

the fact Veyers hadn’t been seen in weeks.

They even tried contacting Noble House Boranova directly to see if they could arrange for a meeting.

Sadly, their representatives told them to get lost. Not in those words, admittedly, they were actually

rather polite, but they had still made it clear they didn’t want to talk to them.

All in all, investigating Veyers was proving to be a lot harder than Zorian initially thought it would be.

At this point in time, however, Zorian didn’t find that either surprising or particularly disappointing.

When was anything about this time loop simple?

Though it was a long-shot, Zorian decided to ask their classmates about Veyers to see if they knew

something. At the very least, Benisek was bound to have heard some rumors about the disgraced

Boranova heir, even if there was no telling how accurate any of them were.

“You’re on time for once, I see,” Akoja told him as he approached the classroom. She marked his

arrival on the attendance sheet she was holding in her hands. “A positive sign. What’s the

occasion?”

Zorian thought about pointing out he was actually incredibly early, but decided not to. Let her have it

her way this once.

“I actually wanted to talk to you,” he said.

“Me!?” she asked incredulously, giving him a wide-eyed look. “Err, I mean, sure… what did you want

to talk about?”

“Veyers Boranova,” Zorian said.

“Him?” she asked in distaste. He felt a twinge of disappointment coming off her. “You really know

how to pick a topic, Zorian.”

“Sorry,” he said, genuinely a little remorseful. He probably gave her a bit of false hope he would ask

her out or something, if the feelings he got from her were of any indication. Not what he had

intended. “I just thought you might know something about him, since you’re the class representative

and all.”

“To be honest, I did my best to put him out of my mind,” she said. “I can’t tell you how glad I was

when I heard he got expelled.”

“Well, about that… do you know what exactly he did on that hearing to get expelled?” Zorian asked.

“No. Nobody does,” Akoja said, shaking her head. “I heard people saying he attacked one of the

judges, but that’s probably rubbish. That’s a little too much, even for Veyers.”

As much as Zorian didn’t like the guy, he had to admit there was truth to that. Veyers usually had

some restraint around teachers and other people that had power over him, so he probably wouldn’t

have done something stupid like attacking a judge deciding his own fate.

But he wouldn’t put it past him, either.

“So you’ve never seen him lately?” Zorian asked. “Never heard about anything about what he did

afterwards?”

“No and no,” she answered, giving him a suspicious look. “Why the sudden interest in Veyers?”

“Zach wants to talk to him about something, but can’t find him,” Zorian said. “I agreed to help so I’m

asking people if they know something.”

He sensed a twinge of annoyance from her when Zach’s name came up. Him being suddenly

friendly with Zach didn’t sit well with her, he could tell, but to her credit she didn’t say anything about

it. One of these days he really had to ask her why she disliked the boy so much.

“Maybe his House placed him under private arrest when he got expelled?” Akoja offered. “It was

quite a scandal for them, so they probably don’t want him walking around in public for a while. At

least until things died down a little. Knowing Veyers, he probably couldn’t handle people talking

behind his back and mocking him. He’d lose his temper and make things worse than they already

were.”

“Maybe,” Zorian agreed. It was also possible that Veyers was currently a soulless corpse and his

House didn’t want that to get out for whatever reason. He and Zach were definitely breaking into the

Boranova estate at some point if they failed to find any other clues to Veyers’ location. “It would

make sense, but his House didn’t seem to care about his outbursts before, so…”

“Yes,” Akoja agreed, nodding. “It’s shameful how much they let him get away with. I can’t even

imagine what my parents would do to me if I tried to behave like that. Getting myself expelled? I

would probably be sent away to one of our rural relatives as punishment. I bet Veyers would have

learned how to rein in his temper real quick if he had to work at a farm every time he did something

stupid.”

Wow. Akoja’s parents were pretty strict apparently. No wonder she turned out the way she did.

“How do you think your parents would react if you got expelled?” Akoja asked curiously.

“I… honestly don’t know,” Zorian admitted. “Truthfully, I think I’d be too afraid to find out. They

already don’t like me much, and academic success is the only thing I really have going for me in

their eyes. If that happened, I’d just gather all my savings and portable belongings and leave the

country or something. I wouldn’t even bother coming back home.”

Akoja stared at him in surprise for a moment, at loss how to respond.

“Ah…” she finally said, a little uncomfortably. “I see…”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Zorian. “It’s all highly theoretical, since there is no way I’m getting

expelled like Veyers. One last question. This may sound strange, but do you know what Veyers was

capable of?”

Akoja still stared at him thoughtfully for a moment, probably still focused on his previous admission.

He was tempted to take a quick peek at her thoughts to see what she was considering, but managed

to restrain himself. If he started looking at people’s surface thoughts for no reason, where would it all

end? Besides, looking at the thoughts of a girl that had a crush on him was probably a bad idea to

begin with.

“I assume you mean magically speaking,” she said finally. Zorian nodded. “Well, his atrocious

behavior aside, I do know he was actually doing well in terms of academics. I’m guessing his House

hired some private instructor to teach him, or maybe even did the teaching themselves. I also know

he could make fire without chants and gestures, and really easily too, but that is probably not

unusual for a Boranova.”

Zorian nodded. Noble House Boranova was famous for their mastery of fire magic. The orange,

slitted eyes that all core members of the House shared hinted that this was a result of some

bloodline or enhancement ritual, rather than secret training method, but there was no publically

available information on the specifics of it. Houses were notoriously secretive about such things.

Thanking Akoja for her time and patience, Zorian continued on into the classroom. There were still a

couple of people he wanted to try his luck with.

- break -

“Hello, Benisek,” Zorian said, sitting down next to the boy. “Do you mind if I ask you about

something?”

“Ah! So the great Zorian finally deigns to come back to his old friend!” Benisek said. “And here I

thought you had replaced me with Zach!”

If Benisek hadn’t been smiling widely when he said that, Zorian might have been actually worried

that the boy felt slighted. As it was, he just thanked his luck that Benisek was a very laid back person

who didn’t take things personally.

It also helped that they weren’t terribly close friends, in all honesty. Though that was Zorian’s fault

more than Benisek’s.

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Zorian told him. “You can have more than one friend, you know?”

“True, true,” Benisek agreed readily. “And you look way happier this year than you usually are, too.

Got a girlfriend too, perhaps?”

He wiggled his eyebrows at Zorian suggestively, causing Zorian to roll his eyes at him.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” Benisek scoffed. “You know I’ll find out on my own soon enough, right?”

“Do you know anything about Veyers?” Zorian asked him, ignoring the question.

“Veyers?” Benisek asked. “Ah, I guess you only now found out why he’s not with us this year. I keep

forgetting you live in the middle of nowhere and don’t really talk to people. Anyway, yeah, he lost his

temper on his disciplinary hearing and got expelled. I guess even Noble Houses have only so much

political capital to burn on people like him.”

“Do you know what he actually did?” Zorian asked.

Benisek didn’t. He knew all sorts of speculation about it, such as the one that he set fire to one of the

written witness testimonies or the one where he slept with the daughter of some high-ranking

academy official and bragged about it during the hearing. They were all ‘heard it from a friend who

heard it from a friend’ sorts of story, though, and Zorian didn’t put much stock in them.

Unsurprisingly, Benisek had no idea where Veyers could be at the moment. That’s not to say he

didn’t have anything useful to offer in regards to the topic, though.

“You know, you’re not the only person asking for him,” Benisek said. “I’ve been hearing there are

people discreetly asking people about his whereabouts for a while now. They’re offering money to

anyone who can prove they’ve seen him.”

Huh.

“Do you know who they are?” Zorian asked.

“I’d already have mentioned it if I did,” Benisek said, shrugging. “But looking at the most likely

suspects… I think it’s his House that hired them. If it’s not them, it’s unlikely they would let someone

basically offer a bounty on one of their own.”

“Maybe they don’t know?” offered Zorian.

“If I know, there is no way they missed it,” Benisek said, shaking his head. “I’m just a curious

amateur. Noble Houses all have actual professionals on their payroll.”

So Veyers’ House was looking for him too? Curious. Strange that they could not find him – if Noble

House Boranova had its own intelligence network like Benisek claimed, they really should have

tracked him down by now. Especially since they were his kin, and thus presumably knew him far

better than Zorian ever could.

He thanked Benisek for the information and moved on.

- break -

“No, I don’t know what Veyers did to get expelled,” Tinami said. “It didn’t have to be anything

particularly heinous, though. If the academy actually puts you through a disciplinary hearing, they

are already thoroughly sick of you. He probably shouted at the judge or something similarly minor,

and they decided it was as good an excuse as any. It’s really a shame he couldn’t control himself

more, the last thing his House needs is something like this.”

“Why?” Zorian asked curiously. “What’s wrong with his House?”

“Noble House Boranova is a military house,” Tinami said. “They suffered a lot in the Splinter Wars.”

“Oh, is this something like what happened to House Noveda?” Zorian asked. “Were they too robbed

of their assets?”

“Ah, you know about that…” she said. “No, it’s not like that. They weathered the Weeping without

losing too many people, unlike the Noveda. But they still suffered crippling losses in the dissolution

of the Old Alliance, and they’re a long way from recovering. Having the designated heir of the House

behave like that… that’s not going to help the other Houses take them seriously again.”

Hmm… so House Boranova was weakened, but not so much that people could loot them the way

they did the Novedas. It probably wasn’t in their interest for Cyoria to be destroyed, so why would

Veyers support the invasion?

“Perhaps he just doesn’t care about his House?” Zorian mused out loud.

“I’d normally scoff at the idea of a Noble House heir that doesn’t care about the House they had

spent their entire life being groomed to take over at some point, but there is clearly something funny

going on with Veyers,” Tinami said. “So I don’t know. It’s possible.”

While her explanations were interesting, Tinami ultimately couldn’t tell Zorian where to find Veyers.

And since Tinami was the last of his classmates he had planned to ask about the quarrelsome boy,

this was the end of his current investigation. It had been… surprisingly helpful.

He left the class to go find Zach and report his findings. The other time traveler had decided to talk to

Xvim about getting mind magic lessons instead of accompanying Zorian to class, but he should be

long done by now.

- break -

Surprisingly, when Zorian actually reached Xvim’s office he found that Zach was still inside. That

could be either very good or very bad.

He didn’t have to wait long, thankfully. About fifteen minutes after he arrived, the door opened and

Zach stepped out of the office.

“So, how did it go?” Zorian asked.

“Surprisingly bearable,” Zach said. “He was still kind of insulting, but he didn’t outright provoke me

this time.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much his real personality as far as I can tell,” Zorian said. “So did he agree to

teach you?”

“Yes,” Zach confirmed. “It was easy. We hashed out an agreement about that in the first fifteen

minutes or so.”

“So what have you been doing all this time?” Zorian asked curiously. “Did he decide to hold your first

lesson right then and there?”

“No. Yes,” Zach said. Zorian gave him an unamused look. “What I mean is, he did give me a brief

lesson there at the end, but that’s not why it took so long. We spent most of the time arguing about

your theory that I have a compulsion placed on me. He thought it was stupid of me not to have

someone check up on me right away to see if there is any truth in that.”

“Well, he’s right,” Zorian bluntly told him. “Even if you don’t trust me to do it, you should at least go

pay one of the certified mind mages in the employ of the Mage Guild to examine you. They’re quite

reliable. I used their services myself at one point.”

“I actually trust you more than I do ‘experts’ like those,” Zach said. “It’s just… I don’t want anyone

using mind magic on me. Having someone looking through my thoughts is a last resort as far as I’m

concerned. This compulsion, if it even exists, clearly isn’t a pressing issue. It’s pretty much rendered

irrelevant at this point. I’d rather take the time to learn how to deal with this myself.”

“If you say so,” Zorian said. They had this argument before. There was no need for another rehash.

“In other news, I’ve been asking around our class about Veyers…”

He told Zach about the scarce few things he found out from questioning their classmates. The most

important fact, of course, was that Noble House Boranova appeared to be searching for Veyers as

well.

“Damn,” Zach said. “I guess there is no point in breaking into their estate, now, is there?”

“If we still can’t track down Veyers by the end of the restart, we should still probably do it. Just to

make sure, you know? But if they really are looking for him, then he obviously isn’t there.”

“I don’t understand,” Zach said. “A person like him is too distinctive to just disappear. His eyes alone

ensure most people would note his passage wherever he goes. Yet it’s like the earth swallowed him.

Maybe he physically walked out of the loop?”

Zorian frowned. Theoretically? It could happen. The copies of people inside the time loop were every

bit as real as their counterparts in the real world. Barring Guardian intervention, it should be possible

for a copy to simply step out of the time loop reality and into the real world.

“I guess it’s possible, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Zorian said. “Let’s try to locate him first

and see what happens.”

“I don’t see what we can try that we haven’t done already,” Zach shrugged. “Aside from breaking into

the Boranova estate, that is, and we already know that’s probably a dead end.”

“The restart is still young,” Zorian said, though he largely agreed with Zach. “We’ll wait and see if he

turns up somewhere. Perhaps his House, with their greater manpower and resources, can track him

down for us.”

It wasn’t like they didn’t have anything to do in the meantime.

- break -

Over the next week, both Zorian and Zach slowly advanced their lessons with Xvim and Alanic and

kept an eye for Veyers. Sadly, the Boranova heir never turned up anywhere and their attempts to

find him went nowhere. They even visited many of the nearby settlements near Cyoria in their

search, only to come back empty handed.

Zach floated the idea that maybe Veyers purposely went somewhere far, far away instead of sticking

to the city and its surroundings. In that case, they may have more luck in tracking him down at the

beginning of the restart, before he had time to get too far from familiar ground. It was as good idea

as any they had, but it was of no help to them at the moment. And it also didn’t explain why Veyers

would want to do something like that.

Despite their issues with finding Veyers, Zorian was happy. They finally had a real clue about Red

Robe’s identity, Alanic agreed to teach him more about soul magic and his personal projects were

going along nicely. He had even managed to convince Taiven to accept him and Zach as time

travelers, despite being very suspicious initially.

Initially, the point of making Taiven aware of the time loop was so that they could continue with their

project of making a perfect training plan for Taiven. However, once Taiven was actually convinced

he was telling the truth, she decided she could also help him by finding him someone of his own skill

level to spar with – she claimed it was the best way to really practice combat magic, and that he was

going to start stagnating if he only kept fighting training dummies and dungeon monsters. To that

end, she first pitted him against her two teammates and then against some of her former student

peers that she managed to convince to spar with him.

He won about half of the fights. He could have won them all, of course, but using his mental powers

or various magic items was against the spirit of the spars.

“I’m tempted to ask you for a spar,” Taiven told him one day. “But a real one, not these ones where

you limit yourself to invocations. But I have a feeling I’d get my butt kicked and I don’t think my pride

can take that.”

“Yeah, if I took you on with no holding back I’d just batter down your mental barriers and blast your

mind into unconsciousness,” Zorian said. “You don’t have the power to take me down before I

dismantle your mental defenses. You did once, but not anymore.”

“Yeah, I figured it was like that,” she nodded. “And don’t even get me started on all those bombs

you’re carrying. I’ve seen the tests you and Kael did with all those experimental potion grenades.

You could probably beat me just by saturating the entire area with those, considering how many of

them you made. Are they as expensive as they look?”

“Worse,” scowled Zorian. “The grenades themselves aren’t that bad, but the experimentation needed

to refine their recipe into something that effective is murder on my money stash. I’m actually running

out of cash these days. Looks like I’ll have to start robbing the invaders after all.”

Taiven shook her head ruefully.

“You say that so casually,” she said. “I think this time loop thing is having a bad influence on you.”

“Funny, most people think the time loop improved my behavior,” said Zorian with a smile. “But yes, I

guess in some ways I really am getting worse.”

After a brief discussion about the morality of the time loop and permissible behavior for people

aware of the restarts, the two of them said their goodbyes to each other and went to their respective

homes.

The next morning Zorian and Zach entered Xvim’s office, thinking they would be having yet another

routine lesson from the man. But they were wrong, because once they arrived, they found the office

already occupied by someone.

It was Alanic. He and Xvim were casually chatting with each other when Zach and Zorian arrived,

sipping tea and generally behaving like long lost friends that were finally reunited.

“Ah, mister Kazinski and mister Noveda,” Xvim said. “Just the people we were looking for. Go ahead

and sit down. Mister Zosk and I were just exchanging some very interesting stories…”

Chapter 058

Questions and Answers

Xvim’s office was fairly typical as far as teacher offices went – a small room dominated by a large

table and several bookcases, with much of the free space taken up by mysterious stacks of paper

that every teacher piled up in their offices for some reason. It was relatively cramped even in normal

circumstances; with four people inside, it crossed solidly into uncomfortable territory. There weren’t

even enough chairs for everyone! Though that was admittedly something easily solved with basic

conjuration spells.

Of course, much of Zorian’s current discomfort stemmed from the nature of the meeting he and Zach

had stumbled upon, rather than the lack of elbow room. Interaction between Xvim and Alanic could

make the rest of this restart very uncomfortable, or even force a premature end to it. Still, the

suddenness of this development, as well as the cramped nature of their current environment, greatly

amplified the threatening undertones of the meeting and Zorian couldn’t help but wonder how much

of it was deliberate. Did Xvim and Alanic purposely arrange for this meeting to happen here and now

in order to exert additional psychological pressure on them? Bit of a risky move, if they did. Some

people reacted really badly to being cornered. Zorian would not have pulled such a stunt, were he in

their place.

But no matter. It could be that he was reading too much into it and they just didn’t consider things

that way. Besides, it wasn’t like they were really cornered. Zorian could start a new iteration at any

time, after all.

After exchanging an uncertain look between themselves, Zach and Zorian greeted their two teachers

back, moved into the room and made themselves as comfortable as possible under the

circumstances.

As they settled into the room, Zorian found himself wondering what kind of information the two men

had exchanged. Alanic had probably told Xvim everything he knew about them, but that honestly

wasn’t much and mostly just proved that Zach and Zorian were keeping some things secret from

Xvim. Xvim, on the other hand, had a far more complete picture of what was going on than Alanic…

but would he really tell the warrior priest about the time loop? And would the other man believe

Xvim, even if he would?

Considering the way the two teachers were watching him, he reckoned he would find out the

answers to those questions in very short order.

“Surprised to see me here?” Alanic asked them challengingly.

“Yes,” Zorian freely admitted. “It’s very… interesting to see you here. I didn’t think you and Xvim

knew each other.”

“We don’t,” Alanic shrugged. “I grew concerned about some things about you two and knew you

would never tell me the truth. So I tracked him down to see if he knew something that could help

me.”

“And you just happened to visit him at the time we have a session scheduled with him?” Zorian

asked, raising his eyebrow at the man. “That’s some curiously lucky timing.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it. This is actually my third meeting with your mentor, mister Kazinski,”

Alanic admitted readily. “I came here today specifically to meet with you two.”

“Ah,” Zorian nodded.

“Alright, let’s stop dancing around each other and get to the point,” Zach said, apparently not in the

mood for verbal sparring. He turned towards Xvim. “How much did you tell him?”

“Given the nature of the situation, we felt it would be foolish to try and trick one another,” Xvim said.

“I told mister Zosk everything I know about the time loop… a courtesy I wish the two of you had

extended to me as well. It is quite obvious at this point that you know far more about it than you’ve

chosen to tell me. A rather poor way of repaying my cooperation and generosity, if I may say.”

Ouch. Zorian supposed he could add ‘delivering guilt trips’ to the list of Xvim’s many talents.

“People react very badly if you try to tell them everything,” Zach said, completely unapologetic.

Unlike Zorian, his experience with Xvim and Alanic was both recent and relatively short. He didn’t

care much for Xvim’s appeal to emotions. “I know because I tried it. Give too many details and

people either freak out on you or dismiss you as a lunatic. And this was back when I didn’t know half

the stuff I do today. It’s hard enough to convince people the time loop is real.”

“I feel I have been fairly open-minded about this,” Xvim noted.

“It took Zorian several years of mind-numbing shaping exercises for you to take him seriously,” Zach

said, rolling his eyes. “And even then, you tend to stall for weeks if he mucks up his timing or says

the wrong thing. And that’s Zorian – when I tried to convince you, you didn’t entertain my story for a

second.”

Xvim frowned deeply, but said nothing.

“Okay, this is getting a little too heated,” Zorian said, trying to stave off an argument. “First things

first. Mister Chao, mister Zosk… I apologize for keeping you in the dark. Keeping some of the story

secret from you made perfect sense from our perspective, but I can understand why you would feel

a little betrayed by our behavior.”

Alanic snorted derisively. Zorian suddenly remembered something.

“Actually, do you mind if I ask you something?” Zorian said, looking at Alanic. “What did Xvim say

that convinced you the time loop is real?”

“So you know how to convince me yourselves in the future?” Alanic guessed. Zach and Zorian

immediately confirmed his supposition. “To be honest, I’m still not convinced this is not nonsense.”

“Oh,” said Zorian, visibly deflating. Damn.

“So why the hell are you giving us grief over this if you don’t even believe what we’re saying?” Zach

demanded, folding his arms over his chest defensively.

“Because I can tell you believe what you’re saying,” Alanic said. “So at worst you’re delusional,

rather than just a bunch of liars. I am somewhat hurt that Xvim here got to hear this tale from you,

but you apparently don’t think I’m worth convincing. It’s not like I would have cut all ties with you if I

didn’t believe you, you know? I would have just thought you were a little crazy.”

Zorian gave Alanic an unamused look.

“You say that, but if I came to you with soul defenses that you yourself had taught me and used time

travel as my explanation when you confronted me about it, it would matter a lot whether you believed

my story or not,” Zorian told him.

“Ah, so they are my techniques,” Alanic said, nodding to himself. “I admit that had been bothering me

for a while now. It’s one of the things that caused me to seek out Xvim. It was just so unlikely that a

shifter knew how to teach you some of those things…”

“I did learn some of my soul awareness from a shifter,” Zorian said. “But the majority of it comes from

you.”

“Right. I can see how that could be a bit of a problem,” Alanic mused. “While a time loop would

explain things, there are simpler explanations than time travel for something like that. You could be a

powerful mind mage, for example…”

“I am,” Zorian admitted.

Three surprised looks were immediately directed his way. Even Zach was caught off guard, probably

because he expected him to keep this little factoid a secret at all costs.

“Hey, they wanted the whole truth. Let them have a taste of it,” Zorian shrugged. “Yes, I am a

powerful mind mage. It’s one of the things I had focused on over the restarts.”

“An excellent choice for someone in your situation,” Xvim nodded approvingly. “Endlessly useful and

it would be quite dangerous to train outside the time loop.”

Alanic gave Xvim a mildly scandalized look.

“So, anyway… I come to your place and demonstrate the soul defenses you taught me,” Zorian told

Alanic, looking him straight in the eye. “You ask me how this is possible and I say time travel. You

don’t believe me and check me for mind magic. As it turns out, I am a mind mage. What now?”

“Things get complicated,” Alanic admitted.

There was a short pause as everyone considered things in the privacy of their own minds.

“Well, this didn’t go as planned,” said Xvim, giving Alanic an annoyed glance. The scarred battle

priest shrugged at him unrepentantly. “Let us put hypotheticals aside for the moment. I will concede

that simply telling us everything may not be as simple as it first appears. Nonetheless. I will have to

insist that you try just this once. If you don’t… then both of us will withhold our lessons from you for

the duration of this restart.”

“Additionally,” Alanic quickly added. “If you honestly tell us everything, I will tell you what you need to

do to stop me from getting suspicious at you in future restarts.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully. The carrot and the stick. Truthfully, the threat didn’t worry Zorian much

– losing their lessons for the two weeks or so left in the restart would be kind of annoying, nothing

more.

He shared a look with Zach, who shrugged uncaringly.

“I’m fine with this,” Zach said. “We already planned on doing something like this in the future, didn’t

we? Worst case, we get an example of what not to do when we try for real.”

Thinking about it some more, Zorian had to agree with this. This wasn’t nearly as planned and

controlled as he wanted the eventual reveal to be, but what else was new? Few things went entirely

according to plan, even in the time loop. He may as well tell them everything and see how they

react. He opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by Xvim.

“We would prefer if Zach were to tell the story, if you will,” Xvim said.

“Me?” Zach asked in a surprised tone, pointing a finger at his own chest. “Why? Zorian would

explain it way better than I could. Not only did he figure most of this stuff out before me, he knows

you two far better than I do.”

“Perhaps,” Alanic conceded. “But it is far easier for me to gauge your honesty than it would be to

judge Zorian’s.”

Zach shot him an uncertain look.

“They’re not using mind magic on you,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “I’d be able to tell. But

between this and some of Alanic’s past comments, it seems likely that he has some supernatural

way of checking people’s honesty.”

He then frowned. Something was bothering him. A memory that danced at the edge of his

awareness, trying to make itself known. Suddenly, he realized what this reminded him of – Kylae,

the priestess that predicted the future, had also claimed she had some way of telling if he was being

honest with her.

“You know, you are not the first priest that claimed he could tell if people are lying to them,” Zorian

told Alanic. “Is this some kind of ability priests possess that I’m not aware of?”

“It’s an ability connected to soul magic,” Alanic said. “But higher ranking priests are quite often

trained in soul magic, so you’re not far from the truth. The outer portion of the soul – the aura –

reacts to its host’s thoughts and emotions to some extent, and those with soul sight can learn how to

read and interpret its movements. Since most people have no awareness of their own soul, and thus

no control over it, a soul mage can often get far stronger and reliable tells about people than you

would get by relying on body language and intonation alone.”

“But I can sense my own soul, so it’s not a reliable indicator where I’m concerned,” Zorian surmised.

Alanic nodded.

“But I can’t actually detect and manipulate my aura to such an extent,” Zorian noted. “All you’ve

taught me is how to harden it to resist spiritual attacks.”

“And I only have your word for it,” Alanic shrugged.

“Alright, alright, I’ll do the explanation,” Zach said, interrupting their exchange. He waved his hands

in front of him, conjuring an illusion of the planet above Xvim’s table.

“This is the world,” Zach said, pointing at the gently spinning green-and-blue sphere. He then shifted

his hand to point at green blob that looked vaguely like Altazia. “And this place here is roughly where

Cyoria is. Beneath the city there is a time magic research facility studying a powerful ancient artifact,

likely of divine origin. The researchers think it’s an advanced time dilation chamber, and in a way

they are right. When activated, it takes a detailed record of everything in existence… and copies it.”

Zach waved his hands again, and the ghostly planet forked into two identical spheres – one floating

to the left of the original, and the other to the right. The difference was that the left copy was no

longer spinning, standing still as if frozen in time, while the right one was rotating madly like a

spinning top.

“The copy of the world exists in its own pocket dimension that is under tremendous time dilation.

From the point of the copy-people living in this copy-world, the original world is frozen between

moments. A hundred years passes in a fraction of a second. Not that they know this. The only tell

that the world is a copy bound to its own pocket dimension is that the spiritual planes have been cut

off from the material world.”

From the corner of his eye, Zorian saw Alanic suddenly stiffen.

“Time does not flow normally within the copy world,” Zach continued. He adjusted the illusion again,

altering the right planet slightly. It still spun, but there was a subtle, stuttering quality to it now, since

every couple of rotations it reverted to its initial position before fully completing the spin. “Instead of

always going forward in time, the world is periodically reverted to its original state. Everything is

utterly undone, the land and its people constantly recreated from that initial record of the real world

that was used to make the copy-world in the first place. Time repeats itself over and over, month

after month after month. From the perspective of someone living in such a world, it would be like

they are trapped in a time loop.”

Zach leaned back in his conjured chair and gave Xvim and Alanic a dramatic stare. Zorian had a

feeling Zach was kind of enjoying this, despite his earlier complaints.

“As a matter of fact, there is someone like that,” Zach announced. “Three of them, in fact.”

“Three?” Alanic asked, raising his eyebrow.

“Three,” Zach nodded. “There was supposed to be only one – a single person aware of the

repetition, a mysterious marker stamped onto his soul to make sure he retains his memories through

the restarts. Zorian thinks that is me. If so, I do not remember being this chosen one. A second

person found a way to retain awareness across restarts and messed with my mind, deleting many of

my memories. Much later on, I decided to take on an ancient lich head on in battle and he tried to

blend my soul with Zorian’s as punishment.”

That got him a curious look from both Xvim and Alanic, but Zach didn’t try to elaborate on that,

choosing to instead finish his story.

“We survived, but the experience granted Zorian a functional version of my marker, granting him

awareness of the time loop,” Zach said. “Unfortunately, it also eventually motivated the second time

traveler to leave the copy world. For reasons I won’t go into right now, this means nobody else can

leave without cheating the system somehow. And the fake world is running out of power and will

collapse in little more than four years.”

“And there you have it,” Zach finally concluded, erasing the two illusionary planets with a wave of his

hand and directing a bright smile at the two teachers. “We are all copies of the real thing, living in a

looping, hyper-accelerated copy of the real world. A copy that will soon disappear, taking us all with

it. Nothing you do really matters, and unless we can figure out a way to break the system, nothing

we do will matter in the end, either. Zorian, did I miss anything?”

Zorian suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Just a million details, that’s all. And did he really have to

phrase things so provocatively? It would have already been hard to convince them, there was no

need to make the job harder. But fine, he would play Zach’s game.

“An Ibasan invasion force is going to invade Cyoria at the day of the summer festival. The Cult of the

World Dragon intends to release a primordial in the center of the city while the defenders are

distracted. The mayor of Knyazov Dveri is a necromancer and intends to harvest all of the souls

killed in the conflict in some mad scheme to resurrect his dead wife as a lich and legalize

necromancy,” Zorian enumerated blandly.

“Eh, that isn’t strictly time loop related, so I was going to bring it up afterwards,” Zach said

dismissively.

A long, uncomfortable silence descended upon the room. Both Xvim and Alanic seemed at loss for

words, simply staring at the two of them in indecision and occasionally sharing strange looks

between each other.

Zorian imagined that was how he and Zach had looked when they first stumbled into their meeting,

so this was kind of poetic punishment in his eyes.

“So,” Zach said, clapping his hands. “Any questions?”

- break -

Several hours and many, many questions later, Xvim and Alanic decided they had had enough and

stopped the meeting. They didn’t get everything in the end, not even close, but at the very least they

knew the major details surrounding the time loop mechanism and invasion of Cyoria.

“Damn, that was exhausting,” Zach told him afterwards as they wandered the city. “So much for your

nice, relaxing restart to calm down and plan, huh? Between this and the Veyers thing, this is turning

into a pretty exhausting month.”

“I’ve had worse ones,” Zorian said. “But yes, this was not quite what I had in mind when I told you I

wanted a restart or two to unwind a bit.”

“Do you think it will be worth it in the end, at least?” Zach asked. “They looked rather incredulous

towards the end there.”

“It’s the invasion stuff,” Zorian said. “If I hadn’t lived through it, I’d have trouble believing it too. It

sounds almost as far-fetched as the time loop itself. I’m not worried about that, to be honest. Unlike

the time loop, the stuff about Ibasans, Cult of the World Dragon and Sudomir is pretty easy to

confirm. I just hope they won’t panic and do something stupid when they confirm that part of the

story.”

In the end, they had to meet with Xvim and Alanic two more times in the next four days, giving

further explanations and details to their two increasingly nervous teachers. Like Zorian feared, they

fixated more on the invasion of the City and Sudomir’s plots than on the time loop. He understood,

but was kind of annoyed anyway.

Another thing that was annoying was that Alanic, despite his earlier promise, didn’t tell them how to

stop his future iterations from getting suspicious at them. His explanation that he wanted to ‘check

things first’ was kind of understandable at the beginning, but now Zorian was starting to feel a little

cheated.

He was therefore pleasantly surprised when Alanic came to him on the fifth day of their first talk to

give him the promised information.

“So we just have to claim we’re junior members of this shady church organization of yours and that’s

it?” Zorian asked the man incredulously. “You would have just accepted a claim like that?”

“The Mesalian Order is not ‘shady’,” Alanic told him with a small glare. Sure, Alanic, sure. “It’s just

not well known. And of course I would not just accept it. But neither would I drop everything to

confirm your identity, especially if you forge a legitimate-looking letter of recommendation and give

me something else to focus on. Like Sudomir, for example.”

“If I tell you about the mansion, everything blows up soon afterwards,” Zorian said, shaking his head.

“I’m pretty sure I already told you that.”

“So don’t tell my future self about the mansion, then,” Alanic shrugged. “Use some other piece of

information. There is no shortage of crimes that man is guilty of. I’m sure we can work something out

in the coming days.”

“Fair enough,” Zorian nodded. He took a long look at Alanic, and noticed how tired and disheveled

he looked. It didn’t look like he was getting a lot of sleep these days. “So. Does this mean you

believe us about the time loop?”

Alanic released a long-suffering sigh.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he said. “But I figure there is no harm is helping you with

this. If there is no time loop, the trick will be useless to you. If there is a time loop… well, you and

Zach seem to be our only hope for a decent ending to all this.”

At this point Imaya found them talking and gave Zorian an earful about being a poor host (he hadn’t

offered Alanic anything to eat or drink). Rather surprisingly, she then managed to talk Alanic into

joining them for dinner. He didn’t expect that. After prodding him a bit, Alanic admitted that he was

so busy checking up on things he and Zach told him that he didn’t have a proper meal since

yesterday.

Imaya was terribly smug about the whole thing.

“What was that you said?” She asked with a smirk on her face. It was a rhetorical question, of

course. They both knew what he had said. “Something about how he was ‘obviously’ not interested

and how it was a ‘pointless courtesy’? Seems that old people like me do know a thing or two about

being a proper host, eh?”

Zorian let her have her little victory. She did turn out to be correct in this case, after all. In any case,

Alanic was back the next day, though he didn’t want to eat this time (Zorian had offered; Imaya

couldn’t say anything now) and instead wanted the two of them to visit Lukav about something.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have taken Zach with us as well?” Zorian asked as they put some

distance from Imaya’s house.

“I want to discuss shifters and the primordial,” Alanic said. “From what I understood of your story,

Zach has nothing to contribute there that he didn’t hear from you first. I can’t see a reason to bring

him along. Unless you think he’ll be insulted he’s left out of the talks?”

Zorian considered it. If they were doing something exciting, like fighting monsters and the like, then

maybe. As it was, Zach was already getting annoyed by their talks with Xvim and Alanic,

complaining how much time they take and how boring they were. He probably won’t care much that

Zorian did this without him.

“No, probably not,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll just fill him in later about what we talked about.”

“Good. Let’s hurry to the edge of the city so we can teleport to Lukav’s place,” Alanic said.

“There is no need,” Zorian said with a self-satisfied smile. “Let’s just find a deserted alley and I’ll

teleport us out straight out of the city. The teleport beacon hasn’t been able to stop me for quite

some time now.”

If Alanic was surprised by his claim, he did not show it. Zorian supposed it was a minor thing after

the revelations in the past few days. They found a sufficiently isolated place and soon arrived not far

from Lukav’s house, just outside the village he lived in.

He spoke with Alanic while they walked, the warrior priest telling him about some of the theories he

had thought up over the past few days. Most of them centered on the release of the primordial from

its prison dimension.

“So you think this whole time loop was created to stop the release of this thing?” Zorian said. “I can

see where you’re coming from. On one hand, both the time loop and the primordial release

ceremony are clearly reliant on the planetary alignment to work. It’s not a coincidence that those two

are happening at roughly the same time. On the other hand, the time loop did start a month earlier

than it was supposed to, for some reason. Each restart just happens to end at the time of the

primordial’s release. And on top of it all, the one time the primordial was released prematurely, the

time loop immediately reset itself on its own.”

“Seems like an open and shut case to me,” Alanic pointed out.

“Nothing is open and shut about this time loop business,” Zorian sighed.

“If you say so,” Alanic said. “We’re almost there. Let me do the talking in the beginning.”

As it turned out, this was not the first time Alanic talked to Lukav about the topic. He had already told

his friend about some of the things he found out from Zorian – specifically, the part where a group

was trying to sacrifice shifter children in order to set a primordial loose into the world – and asked for

his advice on tracking down the sacrifices before the ritual takes place. Lukav asked a lot of

questions, and eventually Alanic grew annoyed and decided to just bring Zorian along on his next

visit to clarify things.

Not that Zorian could truly help Lukav understand the issue, since he didn’t truly understand it

himself. Primordial essence was almost as big of a mystery to him as it was to Lukav.

“I don’t understand why they’re killing all these children,” Lukav complained. “If the primordial

essence is just a key to access the prison dimension, you’d think they needed only a drop of

essence to work the magic. They could just… I don’t know, bleed them a little?”

“A bridge, not a key,” Zorian said. Not that he truly understood what the difference was, but Sudomir

had phrased it like that so it was probably important. “Apparently that means they need as much

primordial essence as possible for the ritual to work, so they’re draining the victims of everything

they have. Partial extraction of life force just doesn’t cut it.”

“Even if it wasn’t necessary, they would have likely killed them in the end,” Alanic said. “You don’t

set up a ritual like that and then leave witnesses afterwards.”

In the end, Alanic didn’t get what he wanted out of the meeting. He was trying to find a way to track

down the sacrifices before the ritual began, as well as a way to locate the exact position of the

anchor point of the primordial prison (something more accurate than Zorian’s ‘inside the Hole,

somewhere’). Unfortunately, the only advice Lukav could give him in the end was to try and contact

the local shifter tribes for help.

Alanic then left his friend’s house, but Zorian stayed behind. He wanted to talk to Lukav about his

idea to accelerate his training with the help of transformation potions. The idea was to transform into

magical beings with useful special abilities and then use the experiences gained in that form to

upgrade his own abilities. He was especially interested in creatures that possessed a form of

advanced magic perception, since he was unhappy with his rate of growth there. Xvim claimed he

was advancing along ‘adequately’ there, but Zorian didn’t really have time to be merely adequate.

Lukav gave him both the good news and bad news. The good news was that his idea was solid. It

was a known training aid, just one that was sparingly used due to extreme expense of such

transformation potions. Not an issue for him and Zach. The bad news was that transformation

potions like the ones he wanted couldn’t be found on the open market. This was the sort of thing you

needed good connections and various licenses to obtain. Especially in the sort of quantity he would

need.

Fortunately, Lukav was perfectly capable of making potions like that and willing to help Zorian out.

All Zorian had to do was bring Lukav an appropriate magical creature in good enough condition and

pay a ‘moderate fee’, and the man was willing to make a transformation potion or two out of it. Any

leftovers not used to make Zorian’s potions would belong to Lukav.

Zorian had a feeling he was being thoroughly cheated there, but at the end of the day it was just

money and he should probably be glad that Lukav was willing to essentially break the law for his

sake. He still had an urge to learn how to make transformation potions on his own so he wouldn’t

have to rely on the man.

Something to think about, at least. He made a note in the list of ideas he was making in his free time

and moved on.

- break -

The next couple of days were surprisingly peaceful. Alanic and Xvim agreed to continue teaching

them, cutting down on their usual questioning of them whenever they saw them. They were still

clearly keeping in contact with each other, discussing the time loop and the invaders, but for now

they kept their conclusions to themselves and plotted something in the background. Zorian was a bit

concerned about that, but not enough to lose sleep over it. Their minds were sufficiently open for his

empathy to work on them, and they didn’t feel like they had any malicious intentions towards him

and Zach.

Zorian wasn’t doing anything substantive during this time, his motivation suffering due to his recent

dealings with Xvim and Alanic. He tried his hand at drawing again to pass the time, messed around

with theoretical spell formula and learned some new spells from Zach.

He also let Taiven talk him into several rounds of physical combat. Normally he would never agree to

something like that, no matter how bored, but recently his golem-making skills had progressed

enough that his lack of fighting skills was becoming an issue. He couldn’t make golems fight any

better so long as he only knew the crudest basics of normal fighting. After talking to Edwin, his fellow

golem enthusiast in the class, he had found out that Edwin was (rather reluctantly) taking martial arts

lessons to pre-empt this very problem. That was how he met Naim, actually. And no, there was no

solution except to learn how to fight the hard way.

Taiven absolutely demolished him, of course. She was superior to him in strength, technique and

practical experience. It was not nearly as bad as he feared, though – she actually toned down the

violence to something manageable and gave him some solid advice about what he was doing

wrong.

She still kind of sucked as a teacher. Zorian was pretty sure the student wasn’t supposed to end the

lessons covered in bruises. He should look into hiring a proper fighting instructor someday. Maybe

Naim knew a good one.

Another thing to add to his list.

- break -

It was another quiet day. Most of Imaya’s household, plus Zach and Taiven, were gathered around

the kitchen table, playing a game of cards. Since there were only so many players that could join a

game at once, and since they were horrible players on their own, Kana and Kirielle were each

attached to another person. Kirielle was attached to Zorian, of course, since he was her brother. She

gave terrible advice and complained loudly when he didn’t listen to her, giving clues to other players

as to what his hand looked like. Kana, on the other hand, was sitting in Imaya’s lap – Kael was away

currently, negotiating some kind of deal with one of the alchemists in the city, so Imaya decided to

take her under her wing while she played. The little girl mostly just watched the game, but

occasionally Imaya prompted her for advice and she dutifully suggested a card by silently pointing at

it with her finger.

Imaya always played the suggested card, no matter how terrible the suggestion. And she

was still doing better than Zorian and Kirielle.

He wondered if it would be okay if he started glancing at people’s thoughts from time to time. It was

cheating, but he had Kirielle dragging him down and they didn’t, so it kind of evened out, didn’t it?

He studied his opponents a little. Right now, Zach was solidly winning the game. He was kind of

suspicious about that, but if his fellow time traveler was cheating somehow, Zorian couldn’t figure it

out. Imaya was second, despite the occasional ‘help’ she solicited from Kana. Taiven was in third

place, but she had a solid three point lead on him. Considering his current cards and the confidence

all three of them radiated, he doubted that was going to change in this game.

“Play this!” Kirielle demanded, pointing at a card. Another poor choice on her part.

He played it anyway. Let her see the consequences of her folly, for once.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. Seeing how this was shaping up to be another loss for

him, he immediately handed the cards to Kirielle and volunteered to check up on it.

As it turned out, the visitor was Xvim. Apparently his mini-vacation was over.

“Greetings, mister Kazinski,” Xvim said. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, not really,” Zorian said. “Well, sort of. But it’s nothing really important so don’t worry about it.

Please come in.”

Surprisingly, Xvim didn’t want to jump straight to business like Zorian thought he would. Instead, he

accepted Imaya’s offer of something to drink (tea) and took the time to talk to everyone in the house

(except for Kana, who didn’t talk). He got especially interested in Taiven, since he realized halfway

through their talk that Zorian had told her about the time loop.

Zorian almost had a panic attack when he realized this – he was virtually certain that he was on the

verge of another crisis, and would spend the next few days running damage control. He never

actually told Taiven and Kael the whole truth about the time loop, after all. Thankfully, Xvim seemed

more interested in the training regimen he was devising for Taiven and his help with Kael’s alchemy

research, rather than her opinion on time loop mechanics.

Eventually he managed to get Xvim alone for a while and explained to him that she and Kael only

know a part of the truth, and that he would appreciate if things stayed that way. Xvim didn’t seem to

approve, but promised to respect his wishes.

Xvim also used this opportunity to ask why he was never informed about Kael and Taiven during

their talks, and Zorian admitted he totally forgot to tell Xvim and Alanic about those two. It wasn’t

really relevant to ‘the whole truth’ in his mind. Xvim accepted this explanation without complaint, but

still wanted to talk to them about their perspective on things.

In the end he, Zach and Xvim barricaded themselves in Kael’s alchemy lab to have a proper talk in

peace.

“So. More questions, huh?” Zach said with distaste.

“Yes. But not the kind you are thinking of,” Xvim told them. “I actually came here to talk to you about

your plans for the future.”

“Well, they are still in the process of being made,” Zorian admitted. “You have to understand, it has

only been a single restart since we found out we’re trapped in this world. The lead-up to that was

very stressful, and this restart was supposed to be something of a short vacation. I have been slowly

assembling some kind of plan in my head, but it’s still very rough.”

Currently, Zorian’s plan for moving forward was very simple. Use time loop cheats to amass a lot of

funds. Recruit various experts across the city (and perhaps the country and beyond) as their

researchers, investigators and teachers. Take over the aranean criminal contacts and see if they

could be harnessed for something useful. Trade with aranean settlements for their mind magic

secrets. Raid mage guild records and various magical libraries (including the academy library) for

information and forbidden magic.

“I think you should use your mind magic more,” Xvim told him.

“What?” Zorian frowned. That wasn’t advice he heard very often. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you should attack mages and steal their secrets with your mind magic,” Xvim told him

bluntly. “Not only spells and training methods, but also things you could use to convince them to

cooperate with you.”

“Are… are you sure you should be giving out that kind of advice?” Zach asked him incredulously.

“You have very little time to catch up to Red Robe and find a way to reach the real world,” Xvim said.

“Even for me, the enormity of the task in front of you would be rather daunting. You should use the

tools you are given.”

Wordlessly, Xvim reached into his jacket and handed Zorian a thick notebook. Opening it, Zorian

found it full of names, addresses and accompanying short notes.

“There are people that should be able to help you, whether to increase your skills or track down

some crucial piece of information or material component. Not all of them will be willing to help you

out, however, and sometimes the things you need most out of them, they will not be willing to part

with. In such cases… I suggest you employ more aggressive, even illegal persuasion methods.”

By the end of Xvim’s explanation, the notebook felt incredibly heavy in Zorian’s hands. It was just a

trick of the mind, he knew, but it didn’t help him feel better about it.

“You have no idea what you are asking of me,” Zorian told him bitterly, fighting the urge to throw the

notebook at Xvim.

“Probably not, no,” Xvim agreed. “I was never in your kind of situation in my entire life, and I have

serious doubts I would have risen to the challenge if I was. Especially at your age.”

“You’re asking me to attack people who have done nothing wrong, just because they have

something I want,” Zorian said. “That kind of stuff changes you. I couldn’t even do that to giant

spiders without feeling terrible afterwards. And really, I don’t want to be the sort of person who

became used to stuff like that.”

“Then feel free to ignore my advice,” Xvim said. “I’m only giving you advice; I have no power over

you. If you feel you can do without reaching for methods like these, or that going along with it would

cost you something you cannot afford to lose… then don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.”

There was a short silence where Xvim and Zorian stared at each other, Zorian clutching the

notebook so tightly in his hand his fingers went white. Zach seemed to be at loss what to do,

watching them both uneasily as if waiting for a fight to break out.

Eventually, Xvim broke the standstill by reaching out and pushing Zorian’s hand, still clutching the

notebook, towards Zorian’s chest.

“Keep the notebook, whatever your decision,” Xvim said. “It will be useful regardless.”

Following that, Xvim politely excused himself and left. After he was gone, Zorian looked at the

notebook one last time before slamming it loudly on top of Kael’s alchemy table in frustration.

“Worst vacation ever,” he announced bitterly.

Zach said nothing.

Chapter 059

One Step Forward

Not too long after Xvim had left the house, Zorian did as well. He had no particular destination in

mind, he just wanted to get out of the house for a while. As far as he could tell, it was the only way

for him to get some time alone. The rest of the house’s inhabitants could tell something had

happened between him and Xvim that had greatly upset him and kept prodding him for answers. He

knew they meant well, but gods were they annoying.

Their questions were especially inconvenient because he couldn’t actually answer any of them. Not

without explaining the true nature of the time loop and multiple other things he had been keeping

secret from them.

Maybe he had no right to be annoyed. Considering the magnitude of the secrets he was keeping

from them, their nosiness was well justified. But he was not in a good mood at the moment and it

was hard to be understanding and rational. Best to get away from everyone until he had a chance to

cool off.

Zach didn’t try to follow after him, thankfully. Zorian made a mental note to thank him for his

consideration later.

For a while he simply walked aimlessly through Cyoria’s streets, checking out storefronts and

watching the people around him. Eventually, though, he grew bored with that and decided to visit

some of the more significant places from his past. He checked out his old, academy-provided

apartment that he had lived in during the initial restarts (it was now occupied by someone else, as it

turned out) and spent some time on the roof of the building, just watching the city and feeling the

wind blow over him. He then descended into the dungeon beneath Cyoria and walked through the

lifeless corridors of the aranean settlement hidden within it. Finally, he walked over to Hole and

spent some time peering into its fathomless depths, idly wondering whether the primordial’s prison

was placed here because of the Hole or if the Hole was the product of the prison being placed here.

As he departed from the immediate vicinity of the massive mana well, he encountered a small group

of cephalic rats hiding in the shadows of a nearby building. With him no longer trying to mess up the

invasion and with so many things happening in a short period of time, he almost forgot about them.

He was pretty sure his mind magic had long since surpassed the swarm’s ability to hurt him, so they

didn’t frighten him the way they once had. Hmm…

On a whim, he extended a telepathic probe into one of the rats, trying to start a conversation with the

collective mind of the swarm. Maybe he could bribe or blackmail it into switching sides? Or at least

get it to gather information for him as well as for the invaders – it would hardly be the first time a spy

worked for multiple sides…

Connecting to the collective was easy. Trivial, even. Due to the way the swarm mind worked, it

couldn’t really use mental shields the way he was using them. Instead, it relied on redundancy of

individual rat minds and the sheer psychic might of its combined self when faced with hostile mind

mages.

Talking to the collective, on the other hand, was proving to be as difficult as he had feared it would

be. The swarm treated his every contact as an attack, striking back at him whenever he established

a telepathic link and cutting off individual rats from the greater whole when they realized their

‘counterattack’ was getting them nowhere.

In the end, when Zorian refused to stop his contact attempts and gradually ramped up the

aggressiveness of his telepathic probes, the swarm mind just plain wrote off the entire group he had

cornered and disconnected them all from the collective rather than continue dealing with him.

Only mildly disappointed by the outcome, Zorian continued on, not even bothering to kill the

frightened, suddenly isolated cephalic rats. What would be the point, really? The idea of making the

cephalic rats work for him stuck with him, though. What should he do to get the swarm to hear him

out, though? Just keep pestering it like he just did until the swarm grew sufficiently annoyed with him

to actually start talking back? If Zorian was in their shoes, he’d break the silence after a while to tell

the jerk to knock it off. Just in case it actually worked.

Still, maybe he was assigning excessively human thinking to what was a composite mind made out

of rats. If he wanted to talk to the swarm mind, he might have to actually capture one of the rats and

bind it harder to the collective. Make it impossible for them to cut the connection and abandon it.

Sitting on a nearby bench and taking out a notebook, Zorian started to sketch a spell formula setup

that would ‘lock’ a cephalic rat to its collective. A metal cage with three overlapping wards that

should… no, wait, that wouldn’t work. Maybe he should just make his own connection instead of

trying to strengthen the existing one… if he placed a small marker on five to six rats, it should create

a resonance that…

A while later he had to reluctantly put his plotting aside, because it was getting dark and it was time

to start going back home. It would take a couple of days to finalize the design anyway. And he was

feeling a lot better now too, so there was no need to stay away from Imaya’s house any longer.

He found it curious that making designs for contacting cephalic rats had been satisfying. What did he

like so much about that? After thinking about it for a while, he figured it was because that was a

problem he actually knew how to solve. He wasn’t sure which one of his ideas was the best solution,

but it wasn’t like his time loop problems, which seemed completely intractable. He had no idea how

to track down the five Keys, and even if he did they wouldn’t automatically tell him how to enter the

real world along with Zach. He had no idea how to track down a kid that couldn’t be found by his own

Noble House. Not only did he not have the skills necessary to accomplish these feats, he didn’t even

know which skills he needed for that.

With that in mind, was the sort of thing Xvim advocated even necessary? He had flipped through the

notebook Xvim had given him as he wandered around. Some of the people Xvim had recommended

were experts at divination and mind magic, which might potentially help him gather information. But

most of them were more oriented towards magic in general.

What he had was largely an information problem. Would being a better mage help with that?

It might. What were the chances that the Keys, once found, could be acquired without using a lot of

magical skill and effort? Miniscule, knowing his luck. And the way out of the fake world, whatever it

ended up being, would surely demand far greater skills than he could currently marshal.

And that’s without considering the issue of Red Robe and the fact they would have to deal with him

somehow when (if) they got out of the time loop.

It was dark when he finally returned, and when he entered the house, he found Imaya still awake

and waiting for him.

Honestly, he just didn’t understand that woman.

“You know you didn’t have to wait for me, don’t you?” Zorian asked her, exasperated. “I do have a

key of my own.”

Even if he had forgotten it, it would have been childishly easy to unlock the door with magic. He

could have even relocked it the same way after he went inside.

“I know,” she nodded, unbothered by his tone. “But I wanted to wait for you anyway. Do you feel

better now?”

“I do,” Zorian admitted. He didn’t really accomplish anything, but he felt calmer anyway.

“Where did you go? Just wandering around?” Imaya asked knowingly.

“Pretty much,” Zorian said with a shrug. “I bought Kirielle a hairclip, climbed to the top of a building,

visited a graveyard, stared into a hole and tried to talk to rats.”

“You bought your sister a gift?” she asked, curious. “What’s the occasion?”

Zorian gave her a strange look. Out of all the things he said, that was what she chose to focus on?

“It was cheap and I felt like it,” he said. He sat down opposite to his landlord, not really in the mood

for going to sleep yet. He wasn’t tired. “Why did you wait for me? Aren’t I just a tenant to you?”

“I’m not sure. I have heard about these ‘tenants’. They are supposed to be these terrible creatures

that come home drunk and late, destroy your walls and furniture and never pay rent on time,” said

Imaya, voice tinged with amusement.

“Slander,” Zorian said blandly.

“In all seriousness, I guess you’re right that I care too much,” she said, sighing lightly. “It’s Kana’s

and Kirielle’s fault, I think. They make me think of children I always wish I had.”

Zorian gave her a mildly surprised look. Not because her wanting to have children was so

unbelievable, but because in all the restarts he had known her, she rarely talked about herself like

that. He almost asked her why she was still single if she wanted kids, before he remembered Ilsa’s

warning not to discuss marriage or husbands with her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “It’s natural to want kids, you know? I know young people like

you don’t want to think about it, but that will change as you age.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Though… I apologize in advance for being so

brazen, but if you want children so much, why don’t you just have them. Sure, some people would

judge you for being a single mother, but-”

He was interrupted by Imaya bursting into laughter.

“Oh, that is kind of funny,” she said. “I guess Ilsa told you not to mention my husband and you

jumped to conclusions, hmm? But no, being single isn’t the problem. It’s the fact I’m infertile.”

Oh.

“My husband left me when we found that out,” Imaya said. “He wanted kids too, and I couldn’t give

him any. So there – now you know about that too. It’s not that big of a secret, and I’m mostly over it,

so don’t worry about avoiding any mention of it. I’m not as delicate as Ilsa thinks I am.”

She seemed to consider things for a moment.

“Though don’t mention it on a whim, either,” she added. “It’s a depressing topic.”

“I understand,” Zorian nodded. Why would he keep bringing it up for no reason, anyway? “Just one

question. You being infertile… is this a problem of not being able to afford the cure, or it being

literally incurable?”

“The second, I think. The healers at regular hospitals certainly don’t know of any cure that would

help. If it exists, it’s something that would take a budget of a small state to track down and buy,”

Imaya said.

Zorian filed that away in the back of his head and moved on to other topics. Imaya’s problem, while

tragic, was not very high on his list of concerns. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look for any miracle cures

when he conducted his investigation of the Keys and the like. He was pretty sure Kael would

appreciate something like that too, and powerful medicines might not be useless to him and Zach

either.

He spent the next half an hour talking to Imaya, mostly about Kirielle and what she had been doing

all these days while Zorian was away. He was relieved to hear she was surprisingly well-behaved –

he had been absent more often in this restart in comparison to others, and he was afraid she would

act out because of it. The only issue was that she had apparently broken a couple of plates a few

days ago and never bothered to tell him about it. It was annoying - if she had told him immediately,

he could have probably fixed them up with magic. As it was, the pieces were dumped into the trash

and were long gone now, so he would have to pay Imaya back for the plates with money.

Not that he couldn’t afford it, but still. He was so giving the little brat an earful tomorrow.

- break -

The next day found Zorian sitting in his room, surrounded by a veritable mountain of books. Some of

the books were mundane, borrowed from the library or bought from the stores. Others were brought

over from the book cache held in the aranean treasury, or stolen from the private collections of the

cultists working with the invaders.

He was looking for something, anything, that might allow him to grow fast enough without resorting

to Xvim’s idea of advancement.

Unfortunately, he had found little so far. As expected, really – if there was an obvious way to gather

magical skills and power faster than normal, it would already be in widespread use.

He was actually rather glad when the door opened and Zach walked inside, since it gave him the

excuse to take a break from his self-appointed task. He was kind of amused to see Zach flipping

through a book of his own, though. It wasn’t often that Zach decided to read a book, especially one

as thick as what he was currently holding.

“Something interesting?” Zorian asked him curiously.

“Not really, no,” Zach replied. “It’s a medical textbook. Kael gave it to me. He has been bothering me

for a couple of days now, saying that the time loop is absolutely perfect for medical research and

begging me to invest more of my time in practicing my medical magic. Apparently someone told him

that I am good at medical magic.”

He gave Zorian a small glare while saying the last part. It had no effect on Zorian. He had no reason

to keep that a secret from Kael, and he was pretty sure Zach could have made Kael back off easily

enough if he really tried.

Instead he decided to change the subject and get to the probable point of this visit.

“What do you think about Xvim’s idea?” Zorian asked.

Zach visibly scowled, throwing his book on top of a nearby book stack before replying.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” he said. “Extremely uncomfortable. That’s the kind of stuff Red Robe

did to me, didn’t he? But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. I’m pretty biased here, but I can see

Xvim’s reasoning. If you feel you have to do this, I won’t try and stop you.”

“Did you ever do something like that when you were first gathering strength?” Zorian asked.

“Not like this,” Zach said, shaking his head. “I didn’t like mind magic much, even back then. But I did

attack people and looked through their private libraries and spell collections. I usually had a good

reason to attack these people, though. Maybe you can do the same? Limit yourself to people you

can justify attacking?”

“That’s kind of what I’m already doing,” Zorian said. “Maybe not as aggressively as I could be, but

only because I lack the time to truly dedicate myself to it. Xvim’s whole point is that this wasn’t going

to be enough. That I need to take what I need, regardless of how justified the target is.”

Zach hummed thoughtfully, thinking about that for a couple of seconds. Zorian waited patiently,

curious about what his response would be.

“You know, most of my magic doesn’t come from raiding other people’s secrets,” Zach finally said.

“The majority of it I accumulated by simply paying, begging and annoying various experts into

teaching me. Granted, some of it is only possible because I’m the last of the Novedas. Before its fall,

my House had a habit of financing talented mages from poorer backgrounds while they were still

beginning their careers, and quite a few such people still live and feel they owe Noveda a debt

because of it. Me being the last of them also tugs at people’s heartstrings in some cases, as does

the fact my guardian practically dismantled the House and robbed me of their legacy. Plus, some of

them wish for fame that comes from teaching the last Noveda, or hope to profit from ingratiating

themselves to me, gambling on me restoring the House to glory and paying them back afterwards.

Between my money, family legacy and fame, it usually isn’t too difficult to talk people into teaching

me. Maybe we can leverage that to get some of these people to cooperate willingly?”

“That is an interesting idea,” Zorian said after a short pause. “I’m not sure how effective it would

really be, but it’s worth a try. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the fact I do have some small amount of

reflected fame myself, courtesy of my older brother. It might be a good idea to see if I can get

something with that. That didn’t work too well for me in the past, but back then I clearly wasn’t a

magical prodigy like Daimen. Now, I can effectively pass myself off as a second coming of Daimen

by demonstrating some of the magical proficiency I picked up in the time loop.”

Zach gave him a surprised look.

“Yeah, I know,” Zorian said unhappily. “It kind of rankles to rely on Daimen like that, but desperate

times call for desperate measures.”

Zach just shook his head in amusement, not saying anything.

“What about black rooms?” Zach asked after a while. “Couldn’t we get extra time using them?”

“Actually, yes,” Zorian agreed. “I’ve been checking them out and I think we can definitely trick the

operators beneath Cyoria into letting us use the room once per restart.”

“Just once?” Zach frowned.

“Black rooms are really mana intensive,” Zorian said. “The facility beneath Cyoria can activate their

black rooms twice a month, but the first activation is really inconveniently timed for our purposes. It

happens right at the beginning of the restart. There is no way we can make use of it then, unless we

stage an all-out assault on the facility as the very first thing in the restart. And even if that succeeds,

that would surely cause the facility to shut down and postpone the second planned activation, so it

wouldn’t actually gain us anything.”

“Ugh,” Zach mumbled unhappily. “But that still means we can essentially double our time, doesn’t it?

A single activation gives as an entire month for the cost of a day.”

“In a way, that’s true,” said Zorian. “But it’s a month during which we cannot access any experts or

books we didn’t think to bring with us in advance. It’s useful to be sure, and we should abuse it for all

it’s worth, but it’s not nearly as useful as another actual restart would be.”

“Maybe we can find some more black rooms elsewhere and commandeer them too?” Zach offered.

“It doesn’t hurt to look for them,” Zorian agreed. “In any case, we won’t be able to use the chamber

beneath Cyoria in this restart. We already missed the activation day, unfortunately. But starting in

the next restart, we should plan to take advantage of it every single time to maximize training time.”

“Yeah,” Zach agreed. “Though I can’t help but think those will be some very boring months spent in

there…”

“Probably,” Zorian agreed. Especially for Zach, since he didn’t look like the sort of person who

handled being cooped in a small room for weeks very well. “We’ll see how it goes in the next restart

and adjust the plan from there. If it doesn’t work, we’ll scrap the idea.”

“I know what you’re thinking. I’m not that impatient,” Zach huffed. “I’m not going to throw away a

golden opportunity like that just because I’m a little bored.”

After a quick discussion about what to bring to the black rooms to pass the time (Zach insisted the

best answer to that is ‘girlfriends’, but reluctantly gave up on the idea when Zorian started

enumerating problems with that idea), they lapsed into a short silence. Zach looked around the

room, taking in the books Zorian surrounded himself with and even casually flipping through some of

them.

“So is there anything else?” Zach asked. “Did you find something worthwhile in this little book fort

you made?”

“Not really,” Zorian admitted. “Enhancement rituals seem interesting, if we can find the right one.

Unfortunately, mages are very secretive about those. A lot of enhancement rituals require a lot of

dead test subjects before one can fine-tune them to usability, so mages are leery of admitting they

use them or know how to perform them. I think someone high up in the Cult of the World Dragon is

very good at those, though, so we might have something there if we can track that person down.”

“Don’t enhancement rituals require you permanently tie up some of your mana reserves into

maintaining them?” Zach asked. “Sounds like a bad deal for you. No offense, but you don’t really

have that much mana reserve to burn.”

“That’s why I specified we need to find the right one,” said Zorian. “And besides, nobody said it has

to be me who makes use of them. You’re good now, but it never hurts to get better and your

reserves are more than big enough for an enhancement or two.”

Zach considered it for a while, before shaking his head.

“I’m leery of messing with my magic like that,” he said. “I’m not vetoing the idea, but it would have to

be some pretty amazing enhancement to get me interested.”

“Fair enough,” Zorian shrugged. Indeed, enhancement rituals could be quite dangerous and some

may even have effects that linger across restarts, so Zach’s hesitance was quite reasonable. “Oh! I

been meaning to ask you this, but I keep forgetting. Could you teach me how to cast the simulacrum

spell?”

“Uh, no,” Zach said. “I did find the spell once, but I couldn’t cast it. The scroll said the spell requires

the caster to have ‘awareness of their own soul’, which I couldn’t figure out at the time. I suppose

this is what Alanic is teaching me how to do right now, but at the time I couldn’t figure it out and

eventually gave up on learning it.”

“Hmm,” Zorian hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I can sense my own soul, so I should be able to do it. I

don’t suppose this scroll is somewhere easy to get to, at least?”

“I don’t even remember where I found it,” Zach said. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, before

shaking his head sadly. “Sorry, but it was a long time ago. I think it was in the sanctum of that lich in

Taraman, but it could have easily been in the treasury of that demon-worshipping cult in Tetra or in

that secret vault I found under Marbolkano or in a hundred other places.”

“Damn,” said Zorian. “Well, try to remember. I can’t find a detailed description of the spell, but

depending on how it works it could greatly improve our efforts.”

“Will do,” Zach nodded. Before he could say anything else, though, Kirielle barged into the room.

Posing dramatically for no real reason, she announced that he had another visitor.

Yesterday it was Xvim, and it was Alanic’s turn to come and talk to him.

- break -

After a short round of greetings, Zorian ushered Alanic into his room, where Zach had been waiting

for them, and retook his position on the bed, surrounded by his books. Alanic flipped through some

of them, frowning at the dodgier works he stole from the cultists but saying nothing.

“Xvim visited me yesterday,” Zorian said when Alanic didn’t seem like he would start talking any time

soon.

“I know,” Alanic said. There was no emotion in his voice, and Zorian couldn’t feel anything from his

mind.

“I hope this isn’t an attempt to pressure me to take his advice,” he warned.

“Heavens forbid,” Alanic told him seriously, giving him a grave look. “I didn’t agree with his decision

to begin with, so why would I pressure you to go along with him?”

“You don’t approve?” Zach asked, surprised.

“I’m a priest,” Alanic said. “Why would I approve of attacking innocent people for magical power?”

“Forgive me for saying this, but you haven’t exactly been a shining beacon of morality in the previous

restarts I’ve known you,” Zorian said, frowning.

“Towards my enemies, perhaps,” Alanic shrugged. “But these are not the kind of tactics one should

use on allies and those who haven’t done anything wrong.”

For a few seconds, there was a silence in the room as everyone digested this statement. After those

couple of moments passed, however, Alanic seemed to deflate and closed his eyes in defeat.

“That said,” he began. “I have to say what you’ve told me is both terrifying and depressing. Without

your intervention, both Lukav and me end up dead at the start of the month. Even if the invasion of

Cyoria fails, it will still take thousands of lives, most of which will have their souls captured and fed to

Sudomir’s necromantic device. The aftermath could easily spawn another round of splinter wars, and

I don’t even want to think what this Red Robe of yours would do if allowed to run unchecked.”

“What’s your point?” Zach frowned. “We know damn well the stakes are high.”

“I’m getting to it,” Alanic said, giving Zach an unamused look. Zach just rolled his eyes at him. Rather

than argue further with Zach, Alanic turned back towards Zorian. “From what I understand, a crucial

part of you getting out of this fake world we’re trapped in is finding these five Keys, yes? And the

marker on your soul is supposed to be able to sense them, but you don’t know how.”

“Correct,” Zorian confirmed.

“In that case, it is imperative that you learn how to sense your soul better. If we’re lucky, this will

allow you to understand your marker better and unlock this critical ability,” Alanic said.

“But I’m already doing that,” Zorian pointed out. “You’re already teaching me how to sense my soul

better, are you not?”

“I’m teaching you using the safest method I know of,” Alanic said. “The kind I would naturally use

when a teenager comes to me for help in learning how to defend himself against soul magic. It is not

the fastest one, however. Not by a long shot. The method I have in mind is absolutely lethal if done

even slightly wrong and leaves a permanent mark on the user’s body, and I would have never

suggested it to anyone under normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances, and if

you’re telling the truth about the time loop then the downsides are minimal. The only danger for you

is that you might cut your restart short if you get it wrong.”

Not exactly a small downside in Zorian’s opinion. Still, he was willing to risk it at least once to gauge

how viable it was.

“How much faster is this new method?” Zorian asked.

“A lot faster,” Alanic said, insisting on being frustratingly vague. “Additionally, there is a level of

personal soul awareness you would have never been able to reach using the safe method I’m

currently teaching you. Only by utilizing some of the more extreme methods, like the one I’m

suggesting, could you truly master your skill at sensing your own soul.”

“Well,” Zorian said after a short pause. “I’m definitely interested, then.”

“Yeah, not really much of a choice, isn’t it?” Zach said. “If it’s like that, of course we’re going to go for

it.”

Alanic gave Zach a strange look.

“I’m afraid this offer is only for Zorian for now,” Alanic said, shaking his head. “As you are now, you

would have never survived the ritual. You need a certain amount of existing soul awareness to

undergo this training successfully.”

“What?” Zach protested. “No accelerated learning for me? That’s not fair! I’m perfectly fine with

risking my life, you know!”

“No, Zorian is the one risking his life,” Alanic said. “You would just be throwing it away for no gain.

You can’t afford to be so wasteful with your life. None of us can.”

One giant argument (and some shouting) later, Zach grudgingly accepted that Alanic wasn’t going to

let him go through the life-threatening training along with Zorian. Zach would still accompany them to

the training site, but he would simply continue on with his current lessons rather than what Zorian

was getting.

Strangely, Zorian found himself actually enthusiastic at the prospect of this life-threatening training.

In all honesty, soul awareness training was some of the most boring magic training he had the

displeasure to experience and he would gladly take the chance Alanic was offering. He could

understand Zach’s frustration perfectly.

He just hoped Alanic’s faith in his ability wasn’t misplaced. At the very least, he was sure Zach would

never let him forget it if he actually ended up dying because of a measly training exercise.

- break -

Two days later, Alanic led two of them to a completely new place, even to Zorian. It wasn’t inside the

temple Alanic lived in, or any other place he had brought Zorian over to in the previous restarts. It

was a literal hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere (well, in the middle of the poorly-visited

forest in any case), which opened to a dark, dusty staircase. Light-suppressing wards were etched

into the walls of the staircase, making both magical and mundane illumination impossible. They had

to use their mana to sense their environment, slowly descending down the rough, uneven stairs

while cursing whomever built the place. Probably Alanic, if the surety with which he moved inside

was of any indication. If he didn’t build the place, he was certainly very familiar with it.

In any case, once they finally reached the bottom, they arrived inside a spacious, perfectly square

room. This one wasn’t magically darkened, but Alanic forbade them from casting any lighting spells,

insisting they use torches instead, so it ended up being pretty damn dark anyway.

“It’s a ritual room,” Alanic said. “And the ritual I’m about to do is disastrous if done wrong. Any magic

not related to the ritual could warp it in undesirable ways. Magical lighting should be safe, but it’s

best not to risk it.”

“This whole setup is sinister as hell,” Zach complained. “If Zorian didn’t vouch for you, I’d probably

be attacking you by now.”

Alanic said nothing, instead focusing on lighting all the torches around the room with smooth,

practiced motions. As the dim light of the scattered torches filled the room, it became obvious that

there was a complex spell formula etched into the floor, arranged into several concentric circles.

“So can you explain now what this ritual is all about?” Zorian asked, staring at the spell formula in an

attempt to understand what it did. The outermost circle was simply a classical mana barrier that

sought to isolate the inside of the circle from ambient mana – a common addition to ritual setups in

order to minimize the interference of outside forces upon the magic being done. The innermost

circle, on the other hand, seemed to be some kind of anchor, preventing the contents from going…

uh, what?

“The point of the exercise is for you to die for a time,” Alanic said, turning towards him. All the

torches had been lit by this point.

Zorian looked at the inner circle again. That was supposed to anchor his soul, wasn’t it? Prevent it

from simply moving on…

“More specifically,” Alanic continued, “I will eject your soul from your body while allowing you to

retain awareness of yourself. By becoming a pure soul with no body to distract you, you gain

unparalleled awareness of your soul and how it works. Partially because there is no body to distract

you from concentrating on your soul, and partially because pulling a soul out of the body makes its

structure and quirks less muddled and easier to study.”

“See, what did I tell you?” Zach whispered to him. “He is trying to kill you. Pay up.”

“We never put any stakes on the bet,” Zorian whispered back. “And you’re right only on a technicality

– the point of the exercise is for me to return back to life in the end. I think.”

“If you won’t take this with utmost seriousness, I’m stopping this right now!” Alanic said angrily.

Zach quickly mimicked shutting up and Zorian schooled his features into a properly severe

expression.

Alanic stared at them for a few seconds to make sure they were properly contrite and then continued

on.

“The longer you remain outside the body, the more time you have to hone your skills and the clearer

your soul will become to you,” Alanic said. “But the longer you stay outside the body, the more

tenuous the link that tethers your soul to your body will become. It is a fine balancing act, and the

price of being incautious and guessing it wrong is death.”

Alanic paused for a second.

“There is still time for you to back out,” he finally said.

What, seriously? Like he would back out now.

“I’m willing to risk it,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “What do I need to do?”

“Go sit in the center of the ritual diagram,” Alanic instructed. “Before we do this, we must make

preparations. Several spells have to be cast on you. One is a spell that will tether your soul to your

body, but not pull you back in unless you will it. Another is a spell that will make a sort of magical

brain for your soul to think with, allowing you to retain awareness as a soul without a body. If any of

them is done wrong, you will just die…”

For the next fifteen minutes, Alanic kept explaining the mechanics of the ritual to Zorian, and even

quizzed him several times to make sure he was paying attention. It was a bit tiresome, but he

supposed that for something this dangerous it paid to be overcautious. Alanic felt that he should be

able to handle the ritual, but stressed that there were no certainties when it came to things like this.

A procedure like this was never really safe.

One thing was interesting, though. Zorian couldn’t help but notice how much of the setup clearly

relied upon the leader of the ritual having soul sight and being able to cast soul magic on the trainee.

This was not something an expert in soul defense could set up – it was full-blown necromancy.

Another clue that Alanic might have a bit of a dark past…

“Oh, and one last thing before we start,” Alanic said. “As you may be aware, bodies of living beings

are not designed to work without a soul. Having your soul absent from your body does terrible things

to it. The damage done by a person’s life force running wild throughout one’s body is insidious and

hard to recover from. Many people have permanently ruined their health through abusing this

method of honing their soul awareness. Due to the way the time loop resets your body, you should

be immune to this long-term damage. However, this will do nothing to shield you from the immediate

aftermath of separating your soul from your body for a while. Even if everything goes flawlessly, you

will wake up feeling incredibly sick and in terrible pain.”

“I see,” said Zorian.

“I’m telling you this so you don’t freak out and hurt yourself,” Alanic continued. “It would be best if

you don’t try to talk or move after waking up. Just endure the pain and the sickness for a while and

wait for your body to re-establish equilibrium.”

Zorian nodded, already dreading the experience.

“Ready?”

No.

“Yes,” he said, sounding more certain than he actually felt.

There was no warning. With a sudden movement, Alanic clasped his hand around the top of Zorian’s

head and pulled.

Only once had Zorian felt such pain, and that was when Quatach-Ichl had tried to fuse his soul to

Zach’s. He tried to scream and found that he had no control over his body anymore.

His vision grew dark around the edges, his body felt numb and unfeeling, and all the sound in the

room gradually disappeared. His awareness quickly shrank into a single point, until there was

nothing left.

- break -

And then there was something. His soul blazed into his awareness, bright and clear in a way it never

had been before. He panicked at first, struggling to understand what had happened to him and

instinctively flailing around for some leverage with nonexistent limbs and finding nothing. After a

moment, though, he remembered what was happening and what Alanic’s instruction said – the very

first thing he had to do was find the link that tethered his soul to his body. He must never let it out of

his sight, lest he stay this way for too long without realizing.

He was alone – alone in a way that was difficult to put into words. He could sense his soul, but

everything outside the outer boundary of his soul was an empty, silent, featureless void. It was

absolutely terrifying, and he felt a powerful urge to return to his body immediately.

But he didn’t. Gradually he calmed down and got to work.

He didn’t know how long he stayed as an aware soul, tracing the structure of his soul and the way it

interacted with the marker woven into it. It was hard to tell the passage of time in his current form. It

didn’t really matter if it was just moments, though, because this one visit told him so many things…

everything was so much clearer and more obvious in this form, and he could already see-

The tether! It was weakening!

After fumbling in panic for a moment, Zorian activated the tether and his tether and soul rushed

down to reunite with his body.

- break -

After going through Alanic’s new soul awareness training a couple of times, Zorian could finally say

with certainty that coming back to life was worse than dying. Having Alanic rip his soul out of his

body hurt like hell, but only for a moment. The pain and the sick feeling from returning to life lasted

for hours, only slowly fading away.

He had to give Alanic some credit, though – it was effective. Very effective. After the fourth session,

Zorian finally managed to locate the part of the marker that was in charge of detecting the Keys. It

turns out the reason it was so hard to puzzle out was that it didn’t work over unlimited distances – it

could only detect a marker when it was relatively close. That meant that, unfortunately, they couldn’t

just follow the path laid out by their marker in tracking them down. But at least they would know now

if they got close to one of them.

None of the Keys were around Cyoria. He had checked just to be sure, since he would have felt like

an idiot if it turned out there was a Key just under his nose and he had never bothered to check.

Aside from that, he also identified a marker function that would tell him exactly how many restarts

they had left until the collapse. They already knew that by now, courtesy of the Guardian, but it was

nice to have a way to check that information at a whim.

In other news, Zach was kind of jealous about Zorian’s increased soul awareness and corresponding

marker control. He was working extra hard on his basic training and was not at all discouraged from

following in Zorian’s footsteps once Alanic pronounced him as ready, despite Zorian describing to

him in loving detail how horrible the procedure felt.

Zorian refrained from noting that Zach had only just started his basic training in soul awareness, and

that it would take multiple restarts before he reached the level Alanic wanted him to be at.

In any case, the restart was nearing its end, so preparations had to be made. Kael once again

brought him his research notebooks to be carried over into the next restart, and Zorian also updated

his own notes, as well as the outcome of Kirielle’s and Taiven’s training regimen for the restart.

And this time, there were new additions to his collection – both Xvim and Alanic brought him their

own notebooks to transfer into the next restart. Well, Xvim actually brought more than one…

“I must admit you’ve outmatched me with your ingenuity in this regard,” Xvim told him. “I would have

never thought to just bring over entire notebooks by storing them in my mind. I trust there is no issue

with giving me the same deal that you gave your friend, yes?”

“It’s fine,” Zorian said. Since he no longer carried the matriarch’s memory packet, he had plenty of

free space for more notebooks. He looked at Alanic standing beside his mentor. “What about you?

Are you sure you only want to transfer this one little notebook?

“It’s all I need,” Alanic said, shaking his head. “Unlike Xvim and Kael, I don’t intend to use the time

loop to conduct some kind of research. I just need facts and names, so that I waste less of your time

the next time you tell me about the time loop.”

“I guess we shouldn’t give this to you if we don’t plan to tell you about the time loop in that restart,

then,” Zorian mused.

“Obviously,” Alanic agreed. “But if you want to undergo the same training you just did, you’re going

to have to tell me about it or else I’d never agree to it.”

“I already guessed that,” Zorian said. “Well, if that’s all, then this is it. This is probably the last time

we will speak to each other before time resets itself.”

Xvim and Alanic shared an uneasy look between each other.

“Actually, there is something else,” Alanic said. “Me and Xvim plan to lead a combat group into the

Hole during the invasion in order to disrupt the so-called ‘summoning’.”

“Well, I’m not going to stop you,” Zorian said, confused at where this was going.

“I know,” Alanic said, giving him a look implying that he was being stupid. “I want you to come with

us. If we can fight our way through to the ritual site, we can identify the mages in charge of the

summoning and you can then interrogate them in future restarts. There is also a high chance that

leaders of the local Cult of the World Dragon will be there too. All in all, this is definitely information

you should be interested in.”

“I am,” Zorian confirmed. “And yes, what you say makes sense. I guess I just wasn’t thinking of the

implications of what you were planning. I guess I’m just so used to failing against the invaders when

trying to fight them directly that I just unconsciously discounted the chance you might succeed. You

know you’re going to have to fight Quatach-Ichl if you want to reach the ritual site, right?”

“We know,” Xvim said. “He might be old and mighty, but he’s still just one mage.”

“Well, one mage commanding a whole army of monsters and underlings,” Zorian noted. “But fine,

we’ll give it a shot.”

“Good,” Alanic said. “Do you think Zach will also come?”

“Are you kidding me? He’d never forgive us if we excluded him out of a good fight like that,” Zorian

said. “Just tell me where the meeting point is and we’ll be there.”

- break -

When Alanic told him he and Xvim would come at the head of a combat group, Zorian had assumed

they meant twenty or so mages as the main combat force and maybe twice that many riflemen to

serve as support. Instead, when he and Zach came to the meeting point they found almost a

hundred men, all of them mages. Some of them were indeed carrying rifles, but Alanic explained that

they were mages carrying firearms rather than regular soldiers.

Xvim and Alanic clearly took their warnings about the invaders and Quatach-Ichl very seriously,

which was a good sign.

In any case, Alanic (who was the overall commander of the group, with Xvim being content to follow

the man’s lead) decided not to waste their strength by fighting through the city to reach the Hole.

Instead, the entire group hid themselves near their destination and waited for the invasion to begin.

“The point of this operation is to catch the leaders of the attack red-handed,” Alanic explained when

one of the mages asked why they weren’t attacking the summoners immediately. “We must wait for

the attack to begin and gather steam, or else they might decide not to stick around the ritual site.”

Xvim and Alanic had clearly been talking to the defenders of the city, making preparations, because

when the fighting started, it immediately turned fierce around the Hole. Defenders focused much of

their efforts into fighting the invaders there, and the invaders reacted to this by concentrating their

forces around the Hole even more.

“We’ll wait for the city defenders to soften the invaders up a little before making our move,” Alanic

announced, dispassionately watching the carnage.

Zorian was watching it too, scanning the crowd from any sign of Quatach-Ichl. The ancient lich was

prone to teleporting often when he fought for real, which made it a chore to keep tabs on him, even

from this distance.

“Every time I lose sight of him I keep expecting him to suddenly appear behind me and blast me in

the back,” Zorian admitted to Zach quietly.

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” Zach replied back equally quietly. “I’ve fought against other liches and

won, but I could never really beat that son of a bitch. And he does have a tendency to pull crap like

that on you when you least expect it.”

Idly, Zorian began to do the same thing he often did these days to calm his nerves – he checked up

on the Key detection mechanism in his marker. He never got a valid response from it, of course, but

it reminded him that he had actually succeeded in something recently, and that usually helped his

mood.

Except he actually did feel something now. Excited, he focused on what the marker was telling him

and-

“Fuck,” Zorian hissed, suddenly stiffening.

“What?” Zach asked worriedly.

“I found Quatach-Ichl,” Zorian said bitterly, pointing at a spot to the left of them. The lich was just

standing next to a building, placidly watching the battle unfold without bothering to intervene.

“Oh,” Zach said, quickly noticing the lich now that he knew where to look. “What the hell is he doing

just standing by the sidelines like that?”

“I don’t know,” Zorian said. “I don’t really care at the moment to be honest. I found one of the Keys.”

“Oh?” Zach said, his mood rising.

“You know that crown Quatach-Ichl is always wearing?” Zorian asked.

Zach looked at him blankly for a moment before his face twisted in a grimace.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Zach complained.

But unfortunately, Zorian wasn’t kidding. According to his marker, Quatach-Ichl was wearing the

crown of the Ikosian emperors, one of the five Keys they needed to assemble to leave the time loop.

“This restart just keeps getting better and better,” Zorian sighed.

Chapter 060

Into the Abyss

Zorian didn’t have time to ponder Quatach-Ichl and his crown for long. Right after his brief

conversation with Zach, a trio of artillery spells impacted the enemy lines in front of them, kicking up

plumes of dust into the air and throwing the battlefield into chaos. Evidently that was meant to

provide a smokescreen for their group, because Alanic announced they would begin their advance

towards the Hole immediately after.

The entire battlegroup surged forward like a coiled spring, eager to take advantage of the distraction.

Zorian found himself struggling to keep up – most of the mages in the battlegroup were physically fit

adults, and Zorian was physically unimpressive even by the standard of his own peers. It took

everything out of him to match their speed and not fall behind. Even then, he would have never

lasted more than a handful of seconds if he hadn’t drunk a stamina potion before the battle.

Zorian had always known that being physically fit was an important requirement for a battlemage, if

only because that’s what the academy named as the reason behind forcing first-year and second-

year students to take physical education classes. Before the time loop, however, he had never really

understood why it was important. It wasn’t about the ability to take hits or having backup when

someone managed to force you into close-quarter combat, though these concerns weren’t wholly

irrelevant either – it was about mobility. A physically fit person could move faster around the

battlefield while carrying more and tiring less.

It was only in moments such as these that Zorian realized how important that was and how much his

weak, scrawny body limited him. He really had to figure out some kind of workaround for that, but a

simple stamina potion would do for now. At least he wasn’t the only one who had neglected his body

– Xvim also had to take the aforementioned potion to keep up with the group, which made Zorian

feel a little better about himself.

As they ran, Zorian noticed that Quatach-Ichl was gone from his spot. A quick consultation with his

marker determined that the ancient lich had teleported himself a fair distance from the battle site,

roughly in the direction from which the artillery spells came.

Well. That was… really unfortunate for those artillery mages. Looks like they would get no more

support from them. However, since every second of Quatach-Ichl’s absence was good for Zorian

and his group, it was probably better this way. Was he callous for thinking that way? Probably.

However, maybe it was because the end of the restart was so close or because it was hard to feel

sorry for people he never met, but he couldn’t help but take a strictly pragmatic stance about this. He

directed a silent thanks to the mages for their sacrifice and then put them out of his mind.

Their approach was noticed very quickly, despite the distraction, and a portion of the enemy force

broke off to confront them. The enemy organization was still in disarray from the artillery magic

attack, so the response force was less numerous than it could have been. Even so, they were pitted

against about one hundred or so mages, twenty war trolls, a regiment of skeleton soldiers and a

small iron beak flock.

Easily manageable, in Zorian’s estimation. Though Alanic’s entire battlegroup had a little less than

one hundred people, they were better equipped and probably more skilled than the average invader

mage. Plus, they had Zach and Zorian on their side. The question was less whether or not they

could sweep the enemy forces aside, but whether they could do so before Quatach-Ichl came back.

Soon, spells started flying on both sides. The enemy mages struck first, hurling wave after wave of

magical projectiles at the approaching battlegroup. Fire bolts, beams of electricity and javelins of

force were concentrated upon specific parts of the battlegroup and timed together so they would

arrive at their targets simultaneously in an attempt to overwhelm individual defenses with impossible

force. In response, the battlegroup stopped advancing at maximum speed and shifted into a

staggered advance, the front half of the group halting in place to better shield the whole and

counterattack while the back half surged forward. Once the back half of the group overtook the

defending half, they switched roles, the previously defending half suddenly advancing towards the

enemy while the other half covered them and responded to attacks.

Though such tactics greatly slowed down their advance, they were very effective. Despite repeated

attacks, the battlegroup didn’t lose a single person as it edged closer and closer to the assembled

enemy forces. The incoming projectiles were dispelled, shielded against and intercepted by floating

chunks of stone ripped from surrounding roadway. All the while, the battlegroup kept sending out

their own waves of attack spells at the invaders, scattering the attacks across the entire enemy

group at first and then focusing the majority of their efforts on the weak links among the enemy

mages that they identified with this probing barrage. With every exchange, several invaders ended

up dead or dying with very little to show for it.

At this point, the enemy mages panicked. They ordered their war trolls, iron beaks and skeleton

warriors to charge the battlegroup and stopped pacing themselves, burning through their mana

reserves like crazy to throw out as much firepower as they could in the shortest possible time.

Caught off-guard by the desperate gambit, three of the mages that made up the battlegroup ended

up dead in the initial rush. Afterwards, however, the battlegroup quickly reorganized itself to counter

the attack, stopping their advance in favor of a purely defensive posture.

Alanic, Xvim and Zach became more active at this point. Alanic took a few seconds to conjure a

huge, animated bird made out of brilliant orange flame and sent the resulting firebird at the

approaching flock of iron beaks. It proceeded to easily annihilate the flock, simply by flying through

them, and then swooped down towards a cluster of enemy mages to continue its rampage. One of

the mages managed to hit it with a dispelling wave before it could connect with the group, but rather

than collapse upon itself like most magical constructs did when dispelled, the firebird detonated into

a massive firestorm that swallowed both the group targeted by the firebird and the groups adjacent

to it.

At that point, however, Alanic was no longer paying attention to the firebird. The moment he had

finished casting it and sent it on its way, he had shifted his attention to the charging war trolls and

skeleton warriors. He pointed his staff at the war trolls and fired five tiny orange bullets at them in

quick succession. The small orange bullets shone very brightly, like miniature stars, and were

incredibly fast. In the blink of an eye, they reached the war trolls and detonated into massive

conflagrations, far bigger and hotter than any mundane fireball could manage.

Most of the war trolls were incinerated on the spot, but five of them were that strange sort of hyper-

resilient trolls that Zorian sometimes encountered among invading forces – the sort that were

extremely well warded against fire and other forms of damage. These war trolls survived Alanic’s

spell bombardment, but were still singed and dazed by it, so Alanic shifted his attention to the rapidly

approaching horde of skeleton warriors instead.

The undead horde had been thinned somewhat by a continuous barrage of attacks coming from the

rest of the battlegroup, but there were several hundred skeleton warriors and these ones proved to

be resilient against most forms of magic. Powerful wards seemed to have been etched into their

bones, protecting them against common attack spells. It seemed inevitable that at least a quarter of

the skeleton warriors would survive to close into melee with the battlegroup, which would be

disastrous. The moment the horde got close, however, Alanic made a sharp, grasping motion

towards it with his free hand.

There was no visible spell emanating from Alanic, but the pinpricks of sinister light burning inside the

empty eye sockets of every skeleton warrior were instantly snuffed out. The entire horde of

skeletons silently collapsed to the ground, like puppets with their strings cut.

Meanwhile, Xvim mostly concentrated his energies on countering the enemy mages. Whenever the

invaders attempted to concentrate their fire somewhere, he conjured translucent purple clouds in

front of the area, and at least half of the spells that had entered the cloud would end up being

dispelled by the time they passed through it. Sometimes, when the enemy mages tried to employ

some especially powerful spell, he would fire fast moving, milky white globes of ectoplasm that

unerringly homed in and collided with the enemy projectiles, activating them prematurely. Very

rarely, when there was nothing major to be countered, Xvim fired bright blue bullets at enemy shields

– whenever one of those bullets connected with a barrier, it instantly collapsed and went away,

regardless of how strong it seemed.

Strangely enough, Zach didn’t join in the rest of the battlegroup in peppering the enemy with spells.

Instead, he spent most of his time ripping large chunks of the pavement out of the ground and

hurling them at the enemy like a living catapult. It was crude, but surprisingly effective – stone and

gravel could not be dispelled, and stopping all that mass was anything but easy. For the most part,

the only defense against Zach’s catapult impersonation was to move out of the way – which was not

always an option, and, more often than not, exposed the target to equally lethal threats. The five war

trolls that survived Alanic’s fire stars, for instance, were too dazed to move out of the way in time,

and were promptly crushed to death by several tons of falling rocks.

For a moment Zorian wondered why more people don’t try and do what Zach was doing, but then

realized that most people weren’t nearly accurate enough to pull that off. Unlike normal offensive

spells, Zach’s rocks did not home in on the target. It probably took literal decades of practice for

Zach to be so unerringly accurate with his improvised projectiles.

As for Zorian himself, he didn’t bother joining in on the spell exchange. He knew that spending his

limited mana reserves on these spell exchanges wasn’t the wisest course of action for him. Instead,

he roamed through the enemy ranks with his telepathy, hunting for easy targets. Many of the enemy

mages had at least some form of mental defense, but the quality varied greatly. Some of them were

only weakly defended, and quite a few had no mental defenses at all. Zorian viciously punished such

carelessness whenever he found it, driving telepathic knives into their thoughts and puppeteering

their bodies into attacking their comrades. He was fairly sure he was doing way more damage by

doing that than he ever could by casting mundane combat spells.

He also used his mind sense and his marker to keep an eye for ambushes and Quatach-Ichl’s

return. Because of that, he managed to catch a trio of enemy mages trying to circle the battlegroup

and attack them from behind. Although their invisibility spell was good, they were slow to react when

Zorian suddenly attacked them with a severing beam, and all three ended up being cut in half by it.

Suddenly, Zorian’s mind sense detected a mind below their feet, rapidly ascending to the surface. It

wasn’t the first time he experienced something like this, so he knew what he was dealing with.

“Rock worm!” he shouted, shining a harmless beam of light at the spot the creature was about to

emerge from.

Without a word, the mages scattered from the emergence point and set up a kill zone around it. The

rock worm attempted to compensate, somehow detecting the shifting positions of its targets through

the ground, but Zorian immediately adjusted the beam of light to warn others of its movements. Too

stubborn to break off the attack, the rock worm emerged to the surface anyway, erupting out of the

ground in a spray of gravel. It lasted less than five seconds before it was sliced apart into several

pieces by surrounding mages that were waiting for it.

And then it happened. The moment Zorian had been dreading and was diligently on the lookout for –

Quatach-Ichl was back. His return came in the form of teleporting right behind the battlegroup, and

then trying to catch them off-guard with a surprise attack from behind. It would have worked like a

charm, too, except that Zorian by now somewhat understood how the ancient lich thought and had

deliberately chosen to linger in the back of the battlegroup in anticipation of this.

With blinding speed, the ancient lich pointed its bony finger at the thickest concentration of mages in

his sight. Zorian didn’t bother shouting a warning – it would never reach Quatach-Ichl’s targets in

time – he just reached into his pocket and flung a pitch black metal cube at the lich.

A jagged red beam of disintegration magic erupted from the lich’s finger, seeking to slice apart its

unfortunate victims. The cube Zorian threw at the lich was much slower, and would never reach the

lich before the disintegration beam did its grisly work. However, it did not need to – instead of

traveling in the direction the lich was pointing, the red beam curved through the air towards the black

cube, hitting it instead. The cube seemed to drink in the light, absorbing it utterly instead of

disintegrating. It then continued forward unimpeded, but it never actually reached the ancient lich – a

quick gesture from Quatach-Ichl send it careening to the side, where is impacted uselessly against

the pavement.

While this was happening, Zorian raised his hand into the air and created a loud boom to draw

people’s attention to what was happening in the back of the battlegroup.

“The lich is here!” he shouted.

However, rather than continue attacking the back lines, Quatach-Ichl teleported again. The distance

was very short, however, simply getting him to the right of the battlegroup. There he fired the

disintegration beam again, and this time Zorian was in no position to counter him with another cube.

Zach was there, but he was caught off guard and all he could do was raise a quick shield in front of

himself. Other people managed to shield themselves too, but not everyone reacted in time. The

jagged red beam cut a swath of destruction straight into the heart of the battlegroup, killing and

wounding at least 15 mages.

Rather than wait for a response, Quatach-Ichl teleported again, this time to the left of the

battlegroup. However, this was where Xvim was stationed and he was quicker to react than Zach.

Another jagged red beam shot out of Quatach-Ichl’s hand, impacting the dark green shield Xvim

erected between himself and the ancient lich. Quatach-Ichl swept his hand sideways, trying to repeat

his recent move and simply maneuver the beam through the whole group until he encountered a

weak link or two, but found that the beam refused to obey his commands. It remained stubbornly

‘stuck’ to Xvim’s shield, twisting and warping in order to stay connected to it.

Quatach-Ichl dropped the disintegration beam then, but before he could do anything else, Xvim

thrusted his hand forward and the dark green shield surged forward like a battering ram, crashing

into the ancient lich. Quatach-Ichl was forced to take a step back, but was otherwise unharmed. On

the other hand, this momentary distraction allowed an entire barrage of offensive spells from the rest

of the battlegroup to reach him.

Quatach-Ichl suddenly sped up, his movement becoming a blur, and cast shield after shield. Every

spell was blocked, sidestepped or even reflected back to the caster. He then stomped his foot

against the ground, causing a massive sheet of rock and gravel to rise from the pavement and fly

towards the battlegroup. A combined wave of force from numerous mages managed to blow most of

the sheet away before it could flatten everybody, but by then Quatach-Ichl had teleported away

again.

At least four people ended up dead in the exchange, partially as a result of reflected spells and

partially because one large chunk of gravel managed to get through the force wave.

As if completing the circuit, Quatach-Ichl teleported next to the front of the battlegroup. Not only was

this where Alanic had been waiting for him, however – this time both Xvim and Zach had followed

him by teleporting to the front as well. Zorian remained at the back of the group, knowing he was too

weak in direct combat to do more than get in the way against Quatach-Ichl. That didn’t mean he

couldn’t help in his own way, though…

Alanic fired some kind of golden orb at Quatach-Ichl the moment he had appeared, which produced

an almost panicked reaction from the ancient lich. He immediately erected a fancy-looking triple-

layered shield in front of himself, which was probably a good idea since the golden orb passed

through the first two layers as if they weren’t there and was only stopped by the third one. Quatach-

Ichl was then immediately attacked by Zach and Xvim, who struck against him simultaneously from

opposite sides. Zach launched six black, flying blades at the lich while Xvim fired some kind of

layered white orb at him.

The lich suddenly sped up again. Zorian was entirely sure at this point that these bursts of speed

represented the lich hasting itself with some pretty powerful temporal acceleration. Regardless of the

truth of the matter, the extra speed allowed the lich to dodge the black blades and dispel the layered

orb.

Well, try to dispel the layered orb. When the dispelling wave hit it, it only shaved off the surface layer

of the orb, but most of the projectile continued on unimpeded.

At this point, the lich tried to teleport again. However, it was too late. Zorian had finished hastily

carving the spell formula into the ground beneath him and proceeded to pour most of his mana

reserves into the ward he was casting, anchoring it to the spell formula beneath his feet. A powerful

anti-teleportation field immediately snapped into place around the entire area and the lich’s

teleportation spell fizzled out.

The layered orb impacted straight into Quatach-Ichl’s chest. With a high-pitched grinding sound, it

drilled straight through the lich’s armor and detonated inside his rib cage. The ancient lich’s entire

skeleton was suddenly illuminated in arcing white light that seemed to lock down Quatach-Ichl’s

movements. At the same time, Zach’s flying blades that Quatach-Ichl had previously managed to

dodge suddenly reversed direction and slashed at the lich again. Their pitch black surface sank deep

into the ancient lich’s bones, effortlessly slicing through the nigh-indestructible material. In less than

a second, both of the lich’s arms were severed at the shoulder and the blades pressed on. Alanic

started to make his move again…

Suddenly, a massive wave of dark red force erupted from Quatach-Ichl’s form in all directions,

flinging Zach, Alanic and Xvim away from the ancient lich. The wave then continued on, slamming

into the rest of the battlegroup and flinging them about. The physical part of the wave had been

blocked before it reached Zorian, but there seemed to be a soul magic aspect to the wave that went

through normal magical barriers as if they weren’t there. Zorian’s soul, strongly shielded as it was by

now, weathered the assault without issue, but many of the mages around him staggered or even

fainted under the spiritual pressure of the wave crashing into them.

Less than a second after the wave passed, Alanic was back on his feet again, having apparently

weathered the sudden attack with little consequences. Xvim and Zach, however, were a lot less

fortunate. They remained on the ground, still alive and moving but in no position to counter Quatach-

Ichl at the moment. Zach looked particularly affected, rolling around on the ground as if in great pain.

“Crap,” Zorian hissed. He poked the mage near him that seemed least affected by the wave and

pointed to the spell formula at his feet. “Guard this so the lich can’t teleport away, okay?”

He didn’t wait for the man’s answer. He simply sped off towards Zach, hoping he was not too late. If

Quatach-Ichl hit Zach with some heavy soul magic while he was incapacitated, it would be a total

disaster. Damn it, he shouldn’t have agreed to this…

Thankfully, the lich didn’t prioritize finishing off the two downed opponents, partially because it was

too busy re-attaching its arms (apparently it just needed to levitate them back to his shoulders and

they fused back on their own; such bullshit) and partially because Alanic had launched a savage

attack on it almost immediately. The warrior priest launched golden orb after golden orb at the lich,

forcing it to frantically shield and dodge, but it was obvious he couldn’t keep it up and was only

succeeding in keeping the lich busy.

Zorian finally succeeded in reaching Zach and started dragging him away from the battle. Thankfully,

despite taking a soul attack at pretty much point blank, he seemed to be largely unharmed.

“Fuck, that hurt,” Zach complained. “I hate soul magic.”

He had the presence of mind to whine about things. That was a good sign. He couldn’t have been

hurt that badly, then.

At this point Xvim also started to stagger back to his feet, apparently quicker to recover than Zach.

Unfortunately, Alanic’s attack also started flagging a bit by then, and Quatach-Ichl decided that there

was time to put down his two mostly-disabled opponents for good before they could recover. Like the

previous two times, he suddenly sped up and launched two dark red orbs – one towards Zach and

one towards Xvim.

Zorian immediately threw another absorption cube at the path of the orb, knowing it was probably a

waste of time to try and shield against it. The orb was thankfully drawn into the cube and sucked into

it, just like the disintegration beam earlier, so that was one crisis averted. However, he was in no

position to save Xvim. Poor Xvim, there was no way he could-

Almost contemptuously, Xvim backhanded the incoming dark red orb with his left hand, as if striking

an errant child’s ball instead of a magical construct. Against all common logic, the spell didn’t

detonate against his hand like a proper magical projectile, and was instead deflected to the side. It

impacted the ground to the left of Xvim, blowing up a chunk of the road but doing little else of note.

Uh…

Perhaps it was Zorian’s imagination, but even Quatach-Ichl seemed a little shocked at the sight.

Then the moment passed and the battles began again. Alanic and Xvim began exchanging spell fire

with Quatach-Ichl in earnest again, and Zorian took advantage of that to drag Zach away into the

relative safety of the battlegroup. By now, the battlegroup itself was starting to recover from

Quatach-Ichl’s weird soul wave attack and joined in on the battle with Quatach-Ichl, taking off some

of the pressure from Xvim and Alanic. Unfortunately, most of them couldn’t deal with the lich’s

counterattacks nearly as well as Xvim and Alanic could, so they tended to die a lot. In less than a

minute, more than 20 of them ended up dead, though this didn’t dissuade the rest of the battlegroup

from trying to help.

At this point, Quatach-Ichl seemed to have decided he had bitten off more than he could chew and

tried to unravel the anti-teleportation ward Zorian erected. A powerful dispelling wave swept through

the area, seeking to undo Zorian’s work… and failed. If Zorian had simply covered the area with a

free-floating ward, Quatach-Ichl’s ploy would have probably succeeded. However, Zorian had taken

the time and effort to anchor the ward to a spell formula, making it far too stable to be destroyed on a

whim.

Unfortunately for Zorian, Quatach-Ichl seemed to realize this as well… and the spell seemed to have

provided him with some kind of feedback information about the ward, because he immediately went

after the ward anchor. In a brief pause between the attacks, he suddenly crouched and jumped,

soaring through the air as if gravity held no power over him. He flew over most of the battlegroup

and landed squarely next to the ward anchor. The mage Zorian had tasked with the anchor’s

defense stood his ground against the lich, along with a dozen others, but they were all swept aside

with a casual wave of Quatach-Ichl’s hand.

The moment the defending mages were sent flying, Quatach-Ichl sped up again and surged forward,

slamming his hand into the center of the crudely-etched spell formula. The surrounding ground

immediately shattered, destroying the anchor, and before Zorian could so much as blink, the lich

was gone. Teleported away.

A quick consultation of his marker told him that this time, the lich was nowhere near.

The battlegroup took several minutes to recover, regroup and count their dead, and then continued

onward towards the Hole. Out of almost a hundred of them at the start of the battle, only 42 survived

until the end, and 5 of those were too wounded to continue on with them.

Zorian felt they had been pretty lucky, all things considered.

- break -

The closer they got to the Hole, the fiercer, more numerous and more capable their enemies

became. Despite this, they only lost a handful of their remaining mages in these conflicts – as

intense as these battles were, they were something the battlemages knew how to deal with.

Additionally, they were just one group of Cyorian soldiers pushing towards the Hole – there were

other, bigger groups that were assaulting the place from different directions. The invaders couldn’t

spare to send too much of their forces against a relatively minor incursion like theirs.

Quatach-Ichl left them alone for quite a while after his departure. As far as Zorian could puzzle out

from the lich’s movements and random thoughts he had lifted from the minds of enemy mages, this

was because their clash with the ancient lich kept him away from other, more critical battlefields,

which led to a partial collapse of invader defenses around the Hole. Thus, he was too busy propping

his forces back up and putting out fires to properly deal with them.

He did not entirely leave them alone, however. He occasionally teleported near them and attempted

to catch them off guard in various ways. One such attempt consisted of the lich teleporting high into

the air above them and trying to bombard them while flying. Another involved him teleporting a pair

of thunder lizards right next to the group. A third one involved Quatach-Ichl teleporting a fair distance

from the group and then conjuring a miniature horde of animated creatures to attack them. These

attacks never really accomplished much, in large part because Zorian could track him through his

crown and thus always knew when he was coming. In any case, Quatach-Ichl never lingered long,

teleporting away the moment his latest scheme failed.

Zorian was especially fond of the two thunder lizards the lich brought him – since Quatach-Ichl had

taken them away from their controllers, there was no one to contest Zorian’s control once he tried to

subvert their minds. Instead of the thunder lizards rampaging through the battlegroup, Zorian ended

up taking control of them and gleefully used them against every subsequent enemy group they

encountered. They were so effective in Zorian’s hands that Quatach-Ichl eventually showed up just

to get rid of them again.

Too bad the ancient lich didn’t linger long enough for Zorian to thank him for his gift.

Unfortunately, there were limits to everything. Once they started getting dangerously close to their

destination, Quatach-Ichl decided that enough was enough. He teleported into the area around the

battlegroup once again, and this time he brought 15 more mages with him. It was obvious this wasn’t

going to be just another probing strike this time – the ancient lich was ready for round two.

And his very first move upon teleporting in was to thrust his skeletal hand straight at Zorian,

launching a shining green javelin directly towards his chest.

Why? Hell if Zorian knew. Maybe he noticed that Zorian had some way of tracking his movements

and detecting his presence. Maybe the way he had trapped the lich in an anti-teleportation ward and

subverted his thunder lizards had left a particularly big impression on him. Ultimately, the only thing

that matter was that Quatach-Ichl evidently wanted to see Zorian dead as soon as possible.

Zorian didn’t try to use one of his absorption cubes this time – by now, Quatach-Ichl knew damn well

that Zorian had those, so he wouldn’t have bothered targeting him if he thought they could stop the

spell. The way the green javelin effortlessly punched through the multi-layered shields the rest of the

battlegroup erected in front of Zorian also led credence to this assumption. Instead, Zorian simply

reached into his marker and prepared to end the restart – he had no idea if the green javelin had

some kind of soul aspect to it, but better safe than sorry.

Before Zorian could end the restart, however, Xvim made his move. He thrust one hand towards the

area in the path of the javelin and the other towards Quatach-Ichl and his group, causing two small

spatial distortions to pop into existence. The green javelin had shattered all barriers in its way with

effortless ease without visibly weakening in the slightest, but when it encountered the spatial

distortion in its way, it simply disappeared…

…only to reappear in front of Xvim, shooting out of the second spatial distortion and hitting one of

the mages next to Quatach-Ichl, whose hastily erected shield failed to stop it.

It was a miniature gate, Zorian realized, not a pair of spatial distortions. By placing one end of the

gate in front of the green javelin’s flight path and the other in front of the enemy mage, Xvim had

redirected Quatach-Ichl’s own attack against the enemy. For a moment Zorian wondered why Xvim

didn’t redirect it back at the lich instead, but then realized this was a far more useful outcome.

Targeting Quatach-Ichl with his own spell would have been satisfying, but it was unlikely that the

ancient lich would have been felled by the javelin, whereas this way they had one less mage they

had to fight.

Then the battle began in earnest. The mages Quatach-Ichl had brought with him must have been

some sort of elite, because they were far more capable and powerful than the typical invader.

Thankfully, despite the losses they had suffered along the way, the battlegroup still had more than

twice the number of men that Quatach-Ichl’s group had – and the mages that comprised it weren’t

much weaker than those Quatach-Ichl had brought along with him.

However, it became obvious very quickly that Quatach-Ichl really wanted Zorian dead for some

reason. While he didn’t drop everything to concentrate on killing him, he and his subordinates

targeted Zorian whenever they had the chance to do so. It got so bad after a while that Xvim had to

drop everything else and dedicate all of his time to keeping him alive.

It was chaos. Swarms of burning stars flew through the air, colliding with defensive barriers and each

other. A massive black beam that seemed to drink in the light around it scythed through the

battlegroup, forcing Zorian to take a page out of Quatach-Ichl’s book and teleport away to evade it. A

trio of bright red beams zig-zagged through the defensive ranks, closely hugging the ground in an

attempt to get past the shields. A massive animated tiger made of blue flame savaged a pair of

mages before pouncing towards Xvim and Zorian, only to hit the thin, barely visible defensive screen

Xvim erected around them. The tiger of blue flame passed through the screen without resistance,

but something crucial seemed to have been disrupted inside the construct by the passage, because

it unraveled a split second afterwards. One of the enemy mages smashed a clay pot on the ground

in front of him, and a dozen or so incorporeal wraiths flew out of the shattered remains, only to get

quickly destroyed by Alanic. A dozen or so disgusting, mutated, giant rats tried to ambush the

battlegroup under the cover of some very potent invisibility, only to be massacred by Zorian whose

mind sense saw through the illusion with trivial ease. Another group of mages tried to reinforce

Quatach-Ichl’s group, only to die instantly upon arrival as Zach turned the ground beneath their feet

into a set of giant jaws that crushed them to death.

“This isn’t working,” Zach complained to Xvim and Zorian, having retreated to their position. “It’s too

slow. We’ll be here forever at this rate.”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what the invaders are aiming for,” Zorian said. “They just have to keep us

busy until the ritual is finished, not kill us all.”

“You know, you and Xvim are pretty much no use in this fight, except as damage magnets,” Zach

said. A pink, flower-shaped projectile streaked across the sky in a parabolic arc, heading straight

towards Zorian, but Zach ripped a chunk of stone from the roadway beneath them and hurled it into

the air to intercept it. The improvised projectile not only dispersed the funny-shaped (but probably

not-so-funny in effect) projectile, but continued onward towards Quatach-Ichl’s forces, forcing them

to defend against it. “And I reckon Alanic and his men could hold their ground without me.”

“What are you saying?” Zorian said, scanning the battlefield for threats with senses both mundane

and supernatural.

“It’s only us who really have to reach the ritual site. So let’s leave Alanic with the task of keeping

Quatach-Ichl busy and continue on without him,” said Zach.

Yeah, that sounded pretty logical. Zorian doubted Alanic would have anything against the idea.

“Okay, but how do we do that?” Zorian asked.

“Leave it to me,” Zach said, cracking his knuckles. “Xvim, come closer so I can minimize the affected

area. The spell is stronger that way.”

“What do you intend to do?” Xvim asked curiously.

But Zach didn’t reply. The moment Xvim got closer he executed a long and complicated chant and a

white, translucent sphere flickered into existence around all three of them. A moment later, it shot

into the air like a cannon ball, taking them with it.

After they had reached an impressive altitude, bringing them beyond the range of most spells, the

sphere instantly changed directions and flew off towards the hole at incredible speeds. Quatach-Ichl

and his army attempted to shoot them down, but the sphere weaved through the attacks like a

hummingbird on a sugar high, swerving, altering speed and reversing direction with unbelievable

rapidity. What few spells managed to hit the sphere only managed to induce weak ripples on its

surface, like pebbles thrown in a still pond.

Despite its great speed of movement and the rapid direction shifts it was executing, Zach, Zorian

and Xvim remained safely suspended inside the sphere’s center, unaffected by the maneuvering.

Zorian was pretty sure the effect of inertia alone should have killed them by now, but they remained

perfectly alive and healthy. Well, the sight of some of the dodging maneuvers Zach was executing

was making him feel slightly sick, but that was not the fault of the spell itself.

Very quickly, they reached the Hole and unceremoniously plunged into its depths.

Now all they had to do was find where the ritual was taking place.

- break -

The Hole was a big place. Zorian knew the ritual had to be done somewhere around it, and Alanic

seemed certain that it had to happen below ground too. However, that still left lots of places to look

for. Zorian had expected they would have to spend a fair amount of time divining its exact location

and otherwise tracking it down.

In reality, the ritual location was absurdly easy to spot. The moment their flying sphere descended a

little deeper into the Hole, they encountered a huge stone platform floating in the middle of the empty

space.

“I have a feeling this is it,” Xvim said unnecessarily.

Almost as soon as they spotted the platform, the people stationed on it spotted them too. Once

again, the sphere was forced to dodge and weave between attacks, but it continued its rapid

descend towards their target. Zorian mentally prepared himself for touchdown, but it seemed Zach

had a better idea than simply depositing them in the middle of a hostile throng of mages. The sphere

was just about to collide with the surface of the platform when it rapidly changed directions and

slammed into the gathered defenders, trying to fling them off the edge of the platform.

Loud, panicked screaming erupted from their targets, many of which were too slow to realize what

was happening and found themselves stepping into thin air and plunging into abyssal darkness of

the Hole.

The sphere quickly circled the entire platform, flinging more people into the dark abyss surrounding

the platform. Even more were simply knocked down by the movements of the sphere or dazed and

wounded when it impacted them at high speeds. Finally, the sphere ground to a halt and flickered

away, depositing Zach, Xvim and Zorian near the center of the platform.

“That spell really takes a lot from me,” Zach said, stumbling slightly. “Take care of me while I recover

a bit, okay?”

There was no time to answer – though caught off guard by their sudden arrival and the

unconventional attack of the sphere, the defenders quickly started throwing themselves against Xvim

and Zorian.

Zorian surveyed the situation as they fought. At the very center of the platform was a large stone

cube covered in dense, complicated spell formulas. A larger, circular spell formula covered the

ground around the cube, centered around it. Above the cube, a large red sphere floated in the air,

occasionally rippling and warping under the magical forces it was subjected to. After a few seconds,

Zorian realized it was blood. Standing next to the cube was one of the mages, presumably the

leader of the ritual. Another six mages stood on the edge of the spell formula circle. All seven were

chanting and gesturing wildly, completely ignoring the commotion currently happening on the

platform.

Though Zorian would have liked to interrupt the ritual by attacking these seven, he couldn’t. Though

it was not readily apparent, the center of the platform was protected by a powerful hemispherical

shield – he knew because Zach had tried to bowl through their little gathering by ramming his sphere

through the platform’s center, but ended up bouncing off the invisible barrier defending them. Zorian

tried to walk through it, just in case it only blocked magic and not people, but found the barrier as

solid as stone.

Zorian also couldn’t help but take note of the clothes the seven mages in the center were wearing.

They were wearing scarlet red robes that hid their faces behind a veil of supernatural darkness. How

very familiar. This was exactly the same type of robe that Red Robe had been wearing. Well, the

leader of the ritual standing in the center also had a stylized golden dragon embroidered on his robe,

so he was a little different, but the other six wore pretty much identical stuff as Red Robe.

Aside from the core of the ritual taking place at the center, there were only two other interesting

features at the platform.

One was a rectangular stone slab reminiscent of an altar. Several grooves had been cut into the

otherwise featureless rectangle, draining into several stone bowls attached to its sides. The

rectangle was completely spotless for the most part, but numerous red splotches could be seen on

the floor around it.

Right next to the rectangle was a haphazard pile of dead children. There were four of them in total,

and they were completely naked, their skin pale and bloodless and their chests brutally sliced open.

The second place was a collection of seven cages, four of them empty and open, and another three

occupied by three more living children. They had already been stripped naked by the cultists,

wearing nothing except thick brown collars around their necks. The skin surrounding the collars was

red and raw, and in one case outright bloody, suggesting that the children had been desperately

trying to take them off at some point. Zorian assumed the collars were what was stopping them from

transforming.

The three children consisted of two boys and a girl. The two boys were total strangers to him, but he

soon realized that he knew the girl. It was Nochka, the little cat shifter his little sister was friends with

in some restarts. The three of them looked subdued and traumatized when Zach, Zorian and Xvim

arrived on the platform, but once they realized what was happening and that there was a chance

they could be saved, they started screaming for help and shaking their cages without stopping.

Though Zorian felt terrible for it, he ignored them. They were in no immediate danger, as every

invader on the platform was either too busy with the main ritual or trying to kill the new arrivals. He

simply dived into the heads of two unknown boys and memorized their names, homes and general

identity, as well as when and how they were kidnapped by the invaders.

Gradually, the number of enemy mages on the platform fell lower and lower. The pace with which

their enemies were dying especially increased once Zach had a chance to recover a bit and join

them in wiping them out. Even so, they had been fighting for quite a while at this point, and

exhaustion was starting to set in. Additionally, the enemy clearly saw the situation was becoming

hopeless and was starting to become desperate.

Without warning, one of the mages pointed both of his hands at Zorian, launching a huge bolt of

shining force at him. Zorian shielded, but some part of the spell’s effect managed to bypass through

the shield and slammed into him, sending him tumbling backwards. He almost fell over the edge of

the platform, but managed to glue his hands to the stone floor with unstructured magic in the last

moment, leaving him dangling over the dark abyss.

He heaved himself back to the platform, only to find a sickly yellow beam heading straight for him

before he could shield himself and dodge.

Just before the beam would hit him, Xvim stepped into its path. His mentor had probably run out of

mana by this point, because rather than shield against the spell or reflect it, he simply shielded

Zorian with his body.

The yellow ray hit Xvim straight into the chest, dealing no visible damage. Despite this, his mentor

immediately slumped to the floor in a boneless manner and did not move again.

With a harsh movement, Zorian blew the attacker’s skull with a concentrated beam of force and then

quickly moved to check up on Xvim. Sadly, it was as he feared – despite receiving no obvious

damage from the spell, Xvim was already dead.

Zorian didn’t linger. Nothing good would come from mourning his mentor’s death, and the man would

be fine in the next restart. The best way Zorian could honor Xvim’s sacrifice now was to make sure

this entire risky trip had not been in vain.

By this point, most of the enemy mages at the platform had been dealt with, and the ones that were

still alive were being steadily picked off by Zach. After a moment’s thought, Zorian decided that Zach

didn’t need his help so he instead approached the center of the platform again.

The seven mages in red robes were still diligently chanting and gesturing, as if nothing outside their

little bubble was of concern to them. Zorian did not know if this was because they had so much

confidence in the barrier sealing them off from the outside world or if they literally couldn’t stop their

motions without something going terribly wrong, and he didn’t really care. Since he had no way to

break through the invisible defensive bubble, he reached out to the seven mages with his mind.

The barrier, strong as it may be, did nothing to halt Zorian’s psychic abilities. That was the good

news. The bad news was that all seven of them had shielded their mind incredibly well. Zorian had

never seen mental defenses that strong and sophisticated in a non-psychic individual. They had

wrapped their minds in layers upon layers of different barriers, conjured decoy minds to mislead any

attackers and even placed some reactive defenses that automatically counterattacked against any

mental incursions.

And that was for the six ‘outer’ mages. The ritual leader had flat out placed his mind under the effect

of mind blank, and Zorian couldn’t tamper with him at all.

Undeterred, Zorian picked one of the six outer mages at random and began his telepathic offensive.

The mage in question flinched when Zorian started his attack, but said nothing and continued his

chanting and waving. Probably couldn’t afford to stop then. Zorian completely ignored the decoy

mind the mage had set up and set about systematically dismantling his mental defenses.

As seconds passed and Zorian started peeling back layer upon layer of man’s mental defenses, the

mage in question started to become increasingly frantic. He tried to dedicate some of his attention to

fighting off Zorian, but he wasn’t psychic and there was only so much he could do to support his

mental defenses without resorting to structured magic. Finally, the mage could not stand it anymore

and abandoned the ritual in favor of repeatedly recasting his mental defense spells.

Sadly for him, he was far too late for this to work. Perhaps if he had dropped the ritual immediately

he could have successfully stalled Zorian’s assault, but at this point Zorian had too much momentum

and was too familiar with the flaws and peculiarities of his defenses. Barrier after barrier continued to

fall.

Meanwhile, the rest of the red robed mages had been growing frantic as well. It seemed that they

really needed all six outer mages to maintain control of the ritual they were performing, and the

sudden absence of one of them had thrown everything into disarray. The sphere of blood floating

above the central cube writhed and wobbled dangerously, and the leading mage kept chanting

louder and louder in an attempt to maintain control over it.

Zorian ignored their plight, focusing on the mage he was targeting. At last, the final barrier fell and he

dived straight into the man’s mind.

“Damnit, get out of my head!” the mage screamed, clutching his head in pain.

Zorian didn’t listen to him, of course. He plunged roughly into the man’s thoughts and memories,

sweeping aside all resistance and seeking out names, goals, passwords, meeting places,

addresses…

“No!” the lead ritual mage suddenly shouted. “No, no, NO! We were so close! This can’t be

happening!”

The orb of blood seethed and boiled, strange shapes akin to mouths and eyes occasionally dancing

on its surface, before it suddenly stilled.

For one single second, the sphere of blood hung motionless in the air, perfectly calm and spherical.

Then everything was illuminated in bright red light and darkness consumed Zorian’s world.

Chapter 061

Anthills

When Zorian woke up, he was back in Cirin, being subjected to Kirielle’s usual morning antics. That

was a relief. When the red light illuminated everything at the end of the previous restart, he had been

afraid there would be lasting consequences. There was a primordial involved, after all, and he felt

they were not something that should be taken lightly. There was a precedent about them being able

to affect souls, considering the role of primordial essence in the creation of shifters.

After chasing Kirielle out of his room, he sat down and performed a quick checkup of his mind and

soul for any non-obvious damage they might have received. Only once his self-diagnosis came up

empty did he relax.

He wondered what the red light signified. The cultists had obviously lost control over the ritual and it

failed in a lethal manner, killing everyone in the area… but he wondered what the nature of that

failure was and how extensive the damage had been. It might be that stopping the ritual mid-way

was almost as dangerous for the city as letting it run its course.

Well, no matter – they would just have to find a way to foil it before it even started.

As a bonus, stopping the ritual early meant that Nochka and the other shifter children wouldn’t get

horrifically murdered to power up the ritual. Previously, Zorian had been running on adrenaline, and

had more pressing concerns to worry about, such as hostile mages trying to kill him… as such, he

had been able to push the emotional impact of those sights aside and not think too deeply about

them. Now, however, there were no such distractions present… and Zorian had a very vivid

memory, especially after going through all those aranean memory magic training methods.

Damn it. Those memories would bother him for months to come, he just knew it. Especially the part

about Nochka. It wasn’t like the suffering of the rest of the children left him cold or anything, but they

were essentially strangers. He saw all kinds of awful things happen to strangers during the invasion,

and was somewhat numb to it by now. But Nochka… he knew her. Even before he had gotten pulled

into the time loop and she became his little sister’s friend, he had known her – albeit only as ‘that girl

whose bicycle he pulled out of the river’. It made it hard for him to just shove the memories aside in

favor of focusing on something else.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to look far for a suitable distraction. Zach showed up at the door to his

home again, just like he had in the previous restart, giving him someone to talk to. Soon, the two of

them found themselves sitting alone in a train compartment, departing from Cirin.

“No Kirielle this time, huh?” Zach said, humming thoughtfully. “I guess this isn’t going to be another

vacation restart, then?”

“Another?” Zorian scoffed. “Some vacation the previous restart turned out to be.”

“Frankly, a lot of that is your own fault,” Zach told him. “If you really wanted to relax, you shouldn’t

have poked around serious matters so damn much. Hell, if you ask me, a proper vacation would

involve leaving Cyoria entirely. We can still do that now, if you want. I know this really gorgeous

beach in Tetra, way down in the south of the continent…”

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Zorian said, waving him off. “Don’t get me wrong, I do need a

small vacation… but I won’t be able to relax with all this bothering me in the background. Let’s take a

couple of restarts to investigate all this new information and then we can relax.”

“Oh?” Zach perked up, leaning forward on his seat. “So you found out something from that mage you

memory probed?”

“Lots of things,” Zorian nodded happily. The attack on the hole had been a very risky maneuver,

even for a pair of time travelers like them, but the payoff was just as great as Zorian hoped it would

be. It seemed that even inside the time loop, the old adage about big gain only coming with big risks

was true. “Do you want everything or just the highlights?”

“Give me the highlights for now,” Zach said. “We can go into details later.”

“Alright,” Zorian nodded. He expected as much. “First of all, did you notice what those mages behind

the shield were wearing?”

“Red robes,” Zach nodded. “Kind of like the one the third time traveler was wearing.”

“They’re not ‘like’ the one Red Robe was wearing, they’re completely identical,” Zorian said. “I’m

sure of it. And that is interesting, since those robes are not something you can buy on the open

market. They are made specifically for the inner circle members of the Esoteric Order of the Celestial

Dragon. No one except them should have one.”

“Red Robe could have simply stolen it,” Zach pointed out. “Though admittedly, I don’t have any idea

why he would go out of his way to steal that robe specifically.”

“Those robes are supposed to be a marvel of magical engineering,” Zorian said. “They are made

from very rare and impressive materials – specifically, scarletite threads and crimson sea silk – and

densely embedded with powerful defensive magics and privacy wards. If they are as impressive as

the mage I memory probed thought they were, I’m not surprised that Red Robe would want

one. I want one too, now. We’re definitely stealing one in this restart so I can take it apart.”

“Hell, if they’re that good, we’re stealing them all,” Zach said. “If they’re made from crimson sea silk,

we can sell them for huge amounts of money based on materials alone. It’s a bit unfortunate,

though, since now we can’t know if Red Robe is just being practical by wearing those robes or if he

really is a cultist.”

“I think there is a good chance he might be a cultist,” Zorian said. “He showed up pretty early in the

restart when he went after us, and he was wearing the robes when he did. That implies he has one

within easy reach of himself. The time he tried to kill you when you were barely out of bed is

especially telling – it sounds like he came rushing at you as fast as he could, with minimal

preparations, yet he still had it on.”

“That’s a good point,” Zach said, frowning. “Well, if that’s true, then he should be easy to find. Just

how many members of the inner circle does the cult have, anyway?”

“Fifteen,” Zorian said.

“You got them all from that mage?” Zach asked in surprise.

“Not all, no,” Zorian shook his head. “I only managed to find the identities of five of them before the

restart ended. But I know how many of them in total exist, and it shouldn’t be hard to track down the

rest with the information I do have. Especially since I know the identity of the person leading the

cult.”

“Man, I’m really starting to get jealous of your mind magic,” Zach said. “Whenever I tried to

investigate the cult, I never really went anywhere with it. Forget about tracking down the leader, I

couldn’t even identify high-ranking members. Not even truth potions helped.”

“Probably because all members of the inner circle, as well as anyone else in important positions,

swore a geas to keep the names and identities of their fellow inner circle members a secret,” said

Zorian. “Mind magic does not care about any of that, of course.”

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in,” Zach grumbled for a second. “Well, what are you waiting for? Are you going

to tell me who the head crazy is, or what?”

“Vatimah Tinc, the head of the local branch of the Mage Guild,” Zorian told him.

There was a brief pause as Zach digested this.

“Well shit,” Zach finally said. “No wonder the invaders could set up bases beneath Cyoria and

operate there unchallenged for more than a month. The man is in perfect position to block and

sabotage any kind of investigation around Cyoria he doesn’t like.”

Zorian nodded wordlessly. Although Eldemar had several institutions dedicated to countering

criminal activity and investigating suspicious incidents, the Mage Guild was the first line of defense in

that regard. With them subverted, nothing else would work correctly.

“Talk about the fox running the henhouse,” Zach said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since it was

obvious for years that someone pretty high up was helping the invasion… but this kind of thing still

catches me off guard. What the hell does someone like that hope to gain by helping the invaders,

anyway?”

“Oh, that’s an excellent question. Thanks for reminding me,” Zorian said. “You see, I found out more

about what the inner circle of the cult is planning with their ritual, and I can tell you it’s not what their

regular members and their Ibasan allies are thinking.”

“They’re not trying to let a primordial run amok through the city in an attempt to appease their world

dragon god that hates all humanity?” Zach asked curiously.

“No,” Zorian shook his head. “That’s what the regular members of the cult think. The inner circle

know that while the ritual involved releasing the primordial into the world, the goal is not to let it do

whatever it wants. The goal is to enslave it and get their very own living superweapon and bound

wish genie. The imprisoned primordial is supposed to be Panaxeth, He Of The Flowing Flesh, and

the inner circle of the cult thinks he can grant them everlasting youth and remake their bodies into

something… better.”

“Better?” Zach asked, arching his eyebrow. “Is this the kind of better where you end up faster and

stronger but covered in eyeballs and tentacles?”

“Well, in the case of that mage I memory probed, it mostly involves him being 21 and healthy again,”

Zorian said. “And having a bigger penis.”

Zach snorted in amusement.

“Panaxeth is supposed to be a fleshwarper, rather than a shapeshifter in the modern sense,” Zorian

continued. “In theory, it should be possible for it to cure diseases, regress people’s age and remake

their bodies into some superior form. It’s just a question of whether they can control it well enough.”

“Can they?” Zach asked curiously. “Control it, I mean.”

“No way to know, really,” Zorian admitted. “But I doubt it. The idea is to restrain Panaxeth with a

binding spell keyed-in to his essence and then subjugate his mind. Even the cultists admit that

Panaxeth’s ever-changing nature means the binding spell won’t stay effective for long. Meaning they

have to enslave it within fifteen minutes or less.”

“You don’t think they can work that fast,” Zach surmised.

“I think it might be impossible even if they had all the time in the world to work their magic,” Zorian

said. “Let me put it this way. When I invaded the mind of that mage at the end, I encountered

powerful and sophisticated mental defenses on him. Better than I had ever seen before on a human

mage. It took me mere minutes to dismantle them and start rooting through his memories. At the

time, I thought the protections were there to compensate for the known weakness of the shield that

protected the ritual ground. But that was just a secondary concern – their real purpose was to ward

off any mental counterattack from the primordial while they tried to bend it to their will.”

“Ah, I get it,” Zach said. “You’re thinking that if you can get through the shields in a few minutes, the

primordial could as well.”

“Yeah,” Zorian admitted. “It’s possible, I suppose, that I’m overselling Panaxeth and that he has no

way to strike back at the minds of cultists trying to enslave him. But primordials are supposed to be

these ancient beings that gave even gods pause, and Panaxeth’s powers revolve around

manipulating living flesh, including the nervous system. At the very least, I expect Panaxeth to have

incredible mental defenses at his disposal. I bet he could weather mental attacks from anything other

than a master telepath with effortless ease.”

Zach and Zorian continued talking for another half an hour, discussing the various facts and secrets

Zorian had discovered with his memory probe at the end of the previous restart. Eventually, though,

the conversation started to wind down.

“Huh,” said Zach thoughtfully. “And here I thought the reason Quatach-Ichl didn’t follow us was

because Alanic kept him too busy to do so.”

“In a way, that’s true,” Zorian said. “If Quatach-Ichl had left the battle to follow after us, his soldiers

would have surely perished without his support… and I have a feeling he cares far more about

Ibasan mages than he does for Cyorian cultists. In that way, Alanic and the rest of the mages that

came with us did keep him busy. Still, if Quatach-Ichl thought there was a good chance the ritual

would collapse without his support, he probably would have went after us anyway. Fortunately for

us, the cooperation between him and the cult’s leadership isn’t exactly rosy. The leaders of the cult

never told him they would be practically defenseless once the ritual starts, which gave him a skewed

image of what kind of forces they had arrayed against us. He had no idea that the seven most

powerful mages on that platform had no way to contribute to its defense.”

“They were afraid Quatach-Ichl would take advantage of their weakness to off them,” Zach surmised.

“Yes, exactly,” Zorian nodded. “Especially since they weren’t completely sure whether or not

Quatach-Ichl was aware of what the true goal of the ritual is. He shouldn’t have been, but old,

powerful archmages like him are hard to fool and keep in the dark about things. And if he knew they

were trying to take control of the primordial, it wouldn’t be particularly strange for him to try and

sabotage them once they release it from its prison.”

For about a minute, both of them were silent. Zorian because he no longer had anything notable to

say, and Zach because he seemed to be considering something.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Zach said, looking around their compartment. “Why are we still on

this train? You didn’t bring Kirielle along with you and we’re well away from Cirin at this point. Can’t

we just teleport directly to Cyoria already?”

“Well, yes,” Zorian said. “I just figured the train compartment is as good a place to talk as any, you

know? Although I’d like to make a detour before we go to Cyoria, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” Zach shrugged. “Where are we going?”

“Eldemar.”

“The capital city?” Zach asked. Zorian nodded. “Why?”

“To see if we can find another Key there,” Zorian answered. “I’ve been thinking about the Keys, and

how they’re apparently treasures of the first Ikosian emperor, and I think there is a chance the royal

treasury has one or more of them. I mean, the crown of Eldemar has been trying to acquire the

legacy of Ikosian Emperors pretty aggressively. Even if the treasury doesn’t contain a piece of the

Key, it would be a good idea to break into their archives. They might know where the keys could be,

even if they don’t actually have them. At the very least, their records and secret documents would be

a good place to start in regards to our search for the Keys.”

“You… want to break into the royal treasury?” Zach asked. After a second of silence, he shook his

head and laughed lightly. “Actually, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We should check out the

treasuries of Sulamnon and a couple of other large Splinter Nations too – Eldemar isn’t the only

country trying to collect imperial artefacts, you know.”

“I know, but Eldemar is the closest and I’m guessing they already know about similar initiatives of

other nations and how successful they are,” Zorian said.

“The only problem is that breaking into the royal treasury is no simple matter,” Zach told him

seriously. “There is no way we can do it this morning, with no preparations whatsoever. And even

with all our skills, I doubt we can do it without being discovered in the process. You

wouldn’t believe how upset the royals get when an intruder successfully gets into the palace. It’s like

kicking over an anthill – they would be after us for an entire month, and they’re actually pretty

capable. It might be best to delay that kind of excursion till the end of the restart.”

“Fine,” Zorian said. It wasn’t like he expected he could just walk into the royal treasury and check

thing up at his leisure. “But I still want to check out the defenses so I know what I’m dealing with. I

assume from your words that you have already broken in there, so you can tell me the details from

your perspective as we walk.”

“I never actually managed to break into the treasury,” Zach said. “Admittedly, I didn’t try very hard. I

did it for a laugh, really, to see if I could do it. Well, it turned out to be harder than I thought. From the

way the Ibasans managed to assemble their secret invasion, you might think the royals and their

forces are incompetent… but you’d be wrong. They guard their treasures very, very well. If only they

valued their loyal subjects as much as they do their possessions…”

The last part was mumbled under his breath, but Zorian heard it anyway.

“I knew this could bring a lot of unwelcome attention to us,” Zorian said. “That’s why I didn’t bring

Kirielle with me this time. One of the big reasons why I decided not to tangle with House Boranova

too much in the previous restart is because that had the potential to get everyone around us in

trouble. I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter if Kirielle, Imaya and the others

suffer due to our actions, since everything will be wiped clean at the end of the month anyway, but I

just can’t let myself think in such a way.”

“No worries,” Zach said, waving his hand dismissively. “I actually appreciate that kind of attitude. I

was kind of worried before that you’d try to make me do some awful stuff in the name of practicality,

but you’re an okay guy.”

Zorian found it a bit amusing how trying to rob Eldemar’s royal family doesn’t qualify as ‘awful stuff’

in Zach’s eyes. It wasn’t unexpected, of course, considering how the royal family stood back and

watched as House Noveda was looted by Zach’s caretaker.

“Anyway, we’ll be annoying all sorts of powerful people in this restart,” Zorian said. “The royal family,

House Boranova and plenty more besides. I intend to go after the cult’s inner circle members, and

they’re probably all very influential people.”

“So we’re just going to go around stirring up one hornet’s nest after another?” asked Zach

rhetorically. “Nice. I’ve done that in a couple of restarts. Fun times.”

Zorian gave Zach a blank look. Sometimes, he really envied his fellow time traveler for having had

literal decades of restarts to fool around and experiment in.

- break -

In the end, their visit to Eldemar transpired without complications, albeit this was largely because

Zorian had Zach telling him what ideas would never work and warning him when something had the

potential to alert the palace guards that they were being spied upon. Some of the countermeasures

Zach described to him would definitely have tripped him up if he had been performing the attempt

alone. The palace wards were so extensive they could even detect when someone

was staring at the building for too long. Zorian still had no idea how something like that could even

work, but he decided to trust Zach that he wasn’t playing a prank on him or something.

Somewhat intimidated by the defenses arrayed in front of him, Zorian decided to limit himself to a

simple visual inspection, using captured pigeons as his remote-controlled eyes. The palace wards

could detect spy animals, but they only reached so high into the air and pigeons had excellent

eyesight.

As far as Zorian could tell, his actions were not detected. Even if they were, though, Zach and Zorian

had already left the city before making the attempt, and Zorian was controlling the pigeons through a

chain of telepathic relays.

The next day they went to Xvim and Alanic to try and convince them that time loop was real and that

they needed help. There was a bit of an argument between Zach and Zorian about how to go about

it – Zorian argued that they should take their time convincing them, while Zach insisted they should

just dump everything in their lap right away and see what would happen. In the end, they decided to

go along with Zach’s plan – if it worked, it would save a lot of time; if it failed, they simply lost a

restart worth of their help, which wasn’t too debilitating.

Predictably, neither Xvim nor Alanic reacted well when faced with Zach and Zorian’s collected

claims, but they both accepted the notes they had entrusted to Zorian in the previous restart and

agreed to at least consider their story. It was more than Zorian had hoped to get out of them, to be

honest.

Veyers still couldn’t be found. Zach confirmed that this was also the case at the very start of the

restart as well – he had sought the boy out before coming to meet with Zorian, and Veyers was

nowhere in Cyoria even then. As such, on the third day of the restart, Zach and Zorian decided to

launch a more intense investigation into Veyers’ whereabouts.

Specifically, they decided to break into Boranova mansion and interrogate Andoril Boranova – the

man who served as the boy’s caretaker ever since his parents had died in the Weeping.

By necessity, their break-in couldn’t be very subtle. Although they had fallen on hard times, the

Boranova were still an old Noble House, and their manor had very good wards protecting it. Neither

Zach nor Zorian were in the mood for spending several restarts gradually mapping their warding

scheme in order to subvert it peacefully. As such, they decided to just barge in, make sure Veyers

was not hiding somewhere in the house under heavy wards, kidnap Andoril and then teleport to a

pre-arranged place so they could interrogate the man in peace.

The initial attack on the manor occurred in the middle of the night (since the city authorities would be

more sluggish at that time, what with most people being asleep and all) and consisted of Zorian

casting a number of ward analysis divinations of the mansion’s wards in order to locate the

wardstone powering them. His probing of the building’s wards was instantly detected, of course, but

it took time for actual people inside the building to organize, understand what was happening, and

muster a response – before they could do anything, Zorian had already found the information he’d

been looking for.

“Over there,” Zorian said, pointing his finger in the direction of the ward stone.

“Got it,” Zach said, quickly starting to perform a long chain of gestures. “I’ll clear a way for us.”

Soon, a devastating piece of artillery magic hit the wall in front of them, opening a brand new

entrance to the mansion in question. They rushed inside, disabling the dazed mansion defenders

they encountered before making a beeline towards the wardstone.

Zorian was shocked by how easy the operation turned out to be. No one could stop them – the

mansion’s inhabitants were caught completely off guard by the suddenness and ferocity of their

attack, and most of them tried to fearfully get out of their way instead of organizing some kind of

hasty defense against them. In little more than a minute, Zach and Zorian had reached the ward

room. The door was made out of thick, alchemically strengthened steel, and was virtually

indestructible in the short amount of time they had to do this… but unfortunately for House

Boranova, the walls were not similarly durable, and Zach unceremoniously blew the door off its

hinges and strolled inside. After that, shattering the golden sphere that served as the anchor for the

mansion’s wards proved trivially easy.

When the mansion’s wardstone fell, all of the wards defending the mansion followed. Sometimes,

wealthy families like this one had backup systems in case treachery or accidents resulted in the

failure of the primary wardstone, but apparently House Boranova didn’t bother with such

contingencies. With no divination wards to get in their way, they quickly scried the entire mansion for

Veyers, only to turn up empty.

No matter – they expected as much. They immediately set off towards Andoril, who was actually

trying to organize some kind of defense after notifying the authorities about a break-in. The group he

gathered around him actually provided the only worthwhile piece of resistance during the whole

operation, but a lack of mental shields meant they suffered devastating losses before they realized

what was happening and could counter Zorian’s abilities.

Andoril Boranova was knocked out and captured, and the two of them quickly teleported away from

the mansion along with their prisoner. They made several teleportation jumps in quick succession,

all of them using different teleportation spells and directions of travel, before finally arriving to a small

underground box with no physical exits that they had prepared in advance for the interrogation.

Strangely enough, when they finally woke up Andoril and started asking him about Veyers, the man

laughed.

It was a very bitter laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

“Veyers, Veyers, Veyers! It’s always that kid, isn’t it?” Andoril sighed. “Alright, what did he do now?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zorian said, his voice resonant and magically distorted. Both he and Zach were

hidden behind several layers of clothing and privacy spells, and the man should be incapable of

casting anything, thanks to a magic-disrupting poison Zorian had fed him while he was unconscious.

Hopefully the measures they had taken would be enough to keep their identities safe from various

investigators, since they intended to let the man go after they were done questioning him. “Where is

Veyers now?”

“I don’t know,” the man grunted, sounding annoyed. Zorian could read his thoughts easily enough,

and knew he was telling the truth.

“Aren’t you his guardian?” Zach asked. “How can you not know?”

“As if that boy ever listened to me!” Andoril snapped. “They made me the boy’s guardian, but never

gave me the authority to discipline him. He comes and goes as he pleases. I haven’t seen him for an

entire week, ever since he got expelled from the Academy.”

“Why was he expelled from the Academy?” Zach asked.

“He lost his temper and erupted into a fireball centered around himself. No fatalities, but some of the

people around him were burned, including a teacher that had tried to restrain him,” Andoril said. “The

Academy said it was an attack. He says he just lost control over his magic, and that if the Academy’s

education was worth a damn, he wouldn’t have such shoddy control over his abilities.”

“And what do you think?” Zach asked.

“I think Veyers did simply lose control over his magic and that the Academy knows it. They were just

looking for a solid excuse to get rid of him,” Andoril said with a derisive snort. “I don’t blame them. I

wouldn’t want him if I was in their place either. Damn it, Veyers, why do you always do this sort of

thing…”

“You’re being surprisingly cooperative,” Zorian pointed out.

“I’m tired of taking the blame for everything that boy does,” Andoril said. “I didn’t see the boy for an

entire week and the first news I heard of him comes in the form of being kidnapped by a couple of

madmen looking for him. Madmen that are willing to launch a frontal assault on a Noble House’s

headquarters situated inside a major city… and are powerful enough to succeed. I’m not dying for

that kid.”

There was a brief pause as Zach and Zorian processed this. From reading the man’s thoughts,

Zorian could tell that the way they masked their identity put the man somewhat at ease – if they had

openly showed him their faces, he would have assumed they intended to kill him at the end, and

would have been much less cooperative. As it was, he felt there was a good chance they would let

him go if he told them what they wanted to know.

The fact that they were asking about Veyers rather than some other, more serious House secrets

was also a factor.

The following hour-long interrogation shed some light on the quarrelsome boy that they had once

shared a class with, partially through honest question-and-answer sessions with Andoril and partially

through strategic use of thought reading, memory probes and short-term memory erasure. It turned

out that House Boranova did have a bloodline, but most of their members never awakened it to its

full potential. In its dormant state, the bloodline simply gave a person exceptional affinity to fire

magic. Only the main line of the family knew how to ‘ignite’ the bloodline into its active state, giving

the user more impressive abilities.

Although House Boranova hadn’t gone extinct during the Splinter Wars and the Weeping, they’d lost

most of the core members of the family. Of the main line of the family, only Veyers had survived the

tribulations, and his father had died without igniting the boy’s bloodline or passing on to him (or

anyone else, really) the specifics of the process.

The consequence of this was that some of the more influential members of House Boranova started

to question Veyers’s right of succession. He was too young, they said, and didn’t even have his

bloodline ignited. What kind of heir of House Boranova didn’t have an ignited bloodline? What made

him actually qualified to lead the House? Wouldn’t it be better to put someone more proven in

charge during these trying times? Someone like… one of them?

The conflict threatened to tear the House apart, until the Veyers faction created a brand new ignition

ritual by piecing together fragmented historical sources and a healthy amount of speculation.

Pressed for time and reluctant to give someone else the legitimacy of an ignited bloodline, they

decided to use the ritual on Veyers right away.

At first, it seemed to work. Veyers developed non-structured fire magic, just like his ignited

predecessors, and he could open magical locks that could only be opened by ignited members of

the house and access the family’s secret areas. The pretenders dropped their claims, and all was

well for a while.

Unfortunately, it soon became clear that either the new ignition ritual was faulty or that some kind of

specialized training regimen was required to stabilize the ignited state, because Veyers started

losing control over his emotions and magic. He became prone to rapid mood swings, laughing

uproariously in one second, only to be reduced to near-suicidal depression in the next, and then

erupting into murderous rage when confronted. His non-structured fire magic started manifesting

itself based on his subconscious desires, frequently spinning out of his control entirely, almost as if it

had a mind of its own.

House Boranova hastily found various experts and magical exercises that allowed Veyers to regain

some measure of control over himself. None of it was perfect, however, and the complaints about

Veyers’s leadership returned in full force. Enraged, Veyers tried to have his challengers executed,

but House Boranova was in too dire a position to start killing its own members… essentially, even

trying to do so would likely result in internal war.

Gradually, Veyers sank into a pit of anger and bitterness at the perceived betrayal of his own family

members, and started to lash out at everyone around him. And when he started going to the

Academy, this anger was extended to the Academy and everyone in it, since their attempts to help

him control his unstable magical abilities didn’t work fast enough for his liking. Just like his family, the

Academy had failed him.

Unfortunately, since Veyers and Andoril didn’t get along very well, the man had no idea if Veyers

had any friends or associates outside the House they could talk to. It was unlikely that anyone else

in his family would know more, either – Veyers had burned his bridges with most of House

Boranova, even the people who had supported him in the beginning, blaming them for the

consequences of his failed ignition. At this point, he was pretty much an heir in name only. The only

reason he hadn’t been stripped of his position already was that there were multiple valid candidates

to replace him, and the Council of Elders was afraid they would tear House Boranova apart if they

selected a replacement immediately.

They knocked Andoril unconscious and then left him lying in a field near Cyoria, set to wake up after

a few minutes. After another half an hour to mask their trail, they both returned to Noveda Mansion.

Zorian was technically living in his old dorm building again, but he and Zach agreed it would be

better if he moved in with Zach for the duration of this restart. That way they would always be close

enough to coordinate with each other to either flee or fight off attackers.

They made a lot of people furious tonight, after all, and they were only going to anger more of them

in the near future. If their hunters ended up tracking them down, it was best if they didn’t let

themselves be picked off one by one.

- break -

The furor created by their attack on Boranova mansion was a sight to see. Zorian had originally

intended to attack the Cult’s inner members immediately afterwards, but decided to postpone that

when he saw the scale of the manhunt launched against them. Cyoria’s authorities really didn’t like

something like that happening right under their noses – between the attack on House Boranova and

the frequent monster attacks that had been taking place in the past couple of days, Cyoria didn’t

exactly look like a safe, civilized city.

Zach and Zorian ended up spending most of the next three days outside of Cyoria, visiting various

sites that Zach had found in the past in search of the elusive simulacrum spell. There was probably a

more efficient way to find the spell itself, but Zorian was a bit sick of information gathering and this

way had the benefit of putting Zorian’s combat skills to a practical test against the various creatures

and hostile mages that Zach knew about. Zach seemed to find this more fun as well.

They fought through an entire tribe of invisible mountain yeti in order to raid the makeshift treasury

they had made from the remains of unfortunate travelers that had fallen to their ambushes. They

eradicated a massive jewel wasp infestation from an ancient temple so they could access the secret

vault around which their main hive was built. They successfully caught a massive man-eater catfish

that was terrorizing the villages of Woga river and extracted a metal scroll case from its stomach, the

spells it contained safely protected inside even after years of exposure to stomach acids of the giant

catfish. They stormed the tower of a minor necromancer and raided a demon cult.

They didn’t find the simulacrum spell, but the restart was only beginning and Zorian didn’t feel like

they were wasting time. Not only was he gaining valuable combat experience, he was also finding all

sorts of interesting magics among their spoils. Although Zach had already sifted through these in

search of magic for his own use, he had a different focus from Zorian, and many things he didn’t

have any interest in were good enough to catch Zorian’s attention. Zach had very little interest in

spell formula, for instance, whereas Zorian zealously studied every magic item they found in their

wanderings, trying to divine their secrets in hopes of deepening his expertise.

Aside from searching for the simulacrum spell and sorting through loot, Zorian also delivered a

number of interesting magical creatures to Lukav so the man could turn them into transformation

potions. Initial results were interesting, though Zorian couldn’t tell yet whether to pronounce the

initiative a success or not.

He also visited several of the experts that Xvim had named in his notebook of targets he should aim

for. He opted not to attack and memory probe them yet, and simply tried to talk to them to see what

he could gain from them peacefully. Sadly, it was like Xvim said – their best tricks they weren’t

willing to share for any price. On the bright side, even the stuff they were willing to share was useful

to Zorian – the female mage that specialized in magic sensing techniques was especially useful,

allowing him to identify several dead-ends among his ideas and helping him narrow down which

creatures had the most useful magical senses to try and obtain. Apparently an Eye Beast – the

floating purple blob covered with eyes that had killed him in one of the restarts – was one of the best

choices for this.

Sadly, when Zach and Zorian tried to search the cave system beneath Knyazov Dveri for the

creature, they could not find it. Even when they checked out the place where Zorian had ended up

getting killed by it so many restarts ago.

Five days after they were informed of the time loop, Alanic and Xvim finally summoned them for a

discussion. Faced with their own words and secret codes contained in the notebooks Zorian

recreated, they tentatively accepted the truth of the time loop. Xvim more so than Alanic, who still

seemed to be having trouble accepting something as bizarre as time travel. On the other hand, Xvim

seemed to be very ill at ease about the invasion and the plot to release a primordial inside Cyoria,

whereas Alanic took that part in stride.

Together, the four of them slowly went through that final battle (which obviously wasn’t in the notes

Zorian gave them), noting what tactics Quatach-Ichl used, what spells were used and how they

fared, as well as the various information Zorian had ripped out of the mind of that cultist mage at the

end. Many ideas and suggestions were thrown around, and many more would no doubt be handed

out after Alanic and Xvim had the chance to pore over the information for a few days.

Alanic seemed to be especially outraged when he found out about the specifics of the child sacrifice

involved in the ritual to release the primordial, and wanted to know the names of the children so he

could have someone guard them. Zorian had no complaints about that – it was actually rather

relieving to hear, and took some weight off Zorian’s conscience for not focusing on them too much.

After that, Zach and Zorian started going after the cult’s inner circle. These raids were far more

subdued and sophisticated than their direct assault on Boranova mansion, but they were hardly

undetected. For one thing, the inner circle of the cult consisted of powerful mages, many of which

had influential positions in various organizations – they were rarely alone, and their homes were well

protected. For another, Zach and Zorian were after their possessions as well as their secrets.

Whenever they gained access to their target’s homes, they took anything that looked valuable,

interesting or incriminating.

Just as the furor over the attack on House Boranova started to die down and the attacks of the

monsters crawling out of Cyoria’s underworld began to subside, a new round of scandals erupted in

the city as several prominent mages were attacked in their homes and robbed of their possessions.

The outrage got so bad that the Crown of Eldemar announced they intend to send a group of royal

investigators to inspect the city and its institutions.

It was a bad time to be a Cyoria city official.

- break -

With a dull thud, the only door connecting the Black Room beneath Cyoria to the time magic

research facility closed shut. From the point of view of the outside world, it would open on the very

next day. From the point of view of Zach and Zorian inside, they had just secured themselves an

extra month of time in the restart.

“We did it,” Zach said happily. “I really thought we messed things up there for a second, but we did

it.”

“We did mess things up,” Zorian said, inspecting the silky red robe in his lap. It was the fabled red

robe worn by the inner members of the cult, one of the four that Zach and Zorian had acquired in

their raids against the cultists. “Our forgery of the royal seal was incomplete and the guy inspecting

our documents saw through it. I had to edit his memories.”

“Ah,” said Zach, deflating a little before his enthusiasm returned in full force. “Oh well, all is well that

ends well. We didn’t forget anything, did we?”

Zorian glanced at the large pile of wooden crates they’d brought with them into the Black Room.

There was a little bit of everything there – food, water, books to sift through, magical spells and

exercises to test, piles upon piles of crystalized mana to make up for the lack of ambient mana in the

Black Room, some interesting magic items for Zorian to study, board games to pass the time with

and so on. He couldn’t see through solid objects, obviously, but they didn’t lose any of the crates in

transit so it should all be there.

“I don’t think we forgot anything, no,” Zorian said, shaking his head. He put the red robe aside for the

moment and gave Zach a tired look. “How come you are so excited about this, anyway? You realize

you’re going to spend the next month cooped up with me in this tiny space, sifting through written

records and going through repetitive exercises?”

“Don’t be a killjoy, Zorian,” Zach said. “This is the first time I’ve been in a time dilation chamber. This

thing could do so much good for us. It’s exciting.”

Zorian chuckled knowingly. He would see how long this mood would last.

Chapter 062

Improperly Used

Inside the Black Room beneath Cyoria, Zorian sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed in

concentration. Floating in front of him was a large sphere of water, its surface calm and smooth,

without even the slightest ripple disturbing its surface. Around the sphere orbited numerous smaller

spheres, each following a different orbit yet somehow managing not to crash into each other.

Without warning, a chunk of crystalized mana sailed through the air and punched straight through

one of the smaller spheres in order to slam into the central sphere. The entire system of watery

spheres trembled and wobbled for a moment, threatening to fall apart.

But it didn’t. After a few seconds, Zorian succeeded in regaining control. Soon, the only evidence of

the impact was the chunk of crystalized mana currently floating in the center of the watery sphere

and the fact that two of the smaller spheres ended up crashing into one another, forcing Zorian to

absorb them into the central mass.

Zorian opened his eyes and glared at Zach.

“It’s so booooring…” Zach sighed, idly chucking another lump of crystalized mana at the sphere.

Zorian temporarily shifted a portion of his concentration at the incoming crystal, seizing control of it

telepathically and hurling it back at Zach. It did nothing, though, since Zach just lazily raised his hand

and caught it in his palm.

Zorian shook his head in a mixture of amusement and exasperation. They had only been inside the

Black Room for ten days at this point and Zach was already starting to get stir crazy.

For a moment he refocused on the water in front of him, causing all of the spheres to merge together

into a thin stream and drain away into the miniature cistern which it had come from. Ten seconds

later it was all gone, leaving behind only a wet chunk of crystalized mana. Zorian let it fall and caught

it in his palm, before turning his attention to Zach again.

Truthfully, even Zorian found the situation hard to bear. They were trapped inside the equivalent of a

tiny apartment, they had virtually no privacy and the lack of a clear day and night cycle was messing

with their sleeping habits. He felt he could understand that one group that ended up butchering each

other a lot better now.

Even so, this was something that had to be done, and they both knew it. The situation was hard to

bear, but they were accomplishing things. Zach spent most of his time slowly honing his personal

soul awareness and mental barriers, occasionally testing the latter against casual telepathic attacks

by Zorian. When he was not doing that, he was either thinking up some way to distract himself or

helping Zorian go through the numerous books and documents they brought with them to the Black

Room. These gathered texts were either stolen from the stashes of high ranking cultists, looted from

the various sites they attacked in their (thus far futile) search for the simulacrum spell, picked up

from the aranean treasury beneath Cyoria or simply bought from the stores with their vast wealth.

Zach wasn’t much of a researcher, but Zorian appreciated his help all the same.

As for Zorian himself, he spent most of his time going through the aforementioned books, practicing

shaping exercises and working on his spell formula blueprints. He could not properly test the latter

within the confines of the Black Room, both because of insufficient materials and because of the

danger of his experiments backfiring in a small confined space, but a lot of spell formula work was

theoretical in nature.

“If you’re so bored, why don’t you finish reading through those scrolls I gave you earlier?” Zorian

asked, slowly drawing out mana from the crystal in his palm to replenish his reserves. Since the

Black Room was completely cut off from the outside world, all of the ambient mana had been used

up by now, forcing them both to use their supply of crystalized mana instead.

“Ugh. Did I ever tell you that I don’t really like reading?” Zach asked.

“Yes,” Zorian deadpanned. “Many times.”

“Well I’m saying it again,” Zach huffed. “I don’t like to read. I especially don’t like to read longwinded

cryptic rantings written by demon-worshipping cultists.”

“Primordials aren’t demons,” Zorian pointed out.

“Whatever,” Zach said, throwing his chunk of crystalized mana at Zorian again. Zorian tried to catch

the incoming crystal with his remaining free palm, but was a lot less dexterous than Zach and would

have likely failed to catch it… if he hadn’t cheated by subtly altering the crystal’s trajectory to hit his

palm. He threw the other crystal at Zach, deliberately aiming it over his head rather than straight at

him, but Zach still caught it without problems. Was Zach always so accurate, or was this simply a

product of endless practice over more than three decades of restarts? “I’m starting to question if

those cultist texts are even worth anything. I don’t remember us finding anything useful in them thus

far.”

“Well, if nothing else, they have the most comprehensive explanation of blood magic, including

actual guidebooks and casting instructions,” said Zorian, picking up a non-descript book bound in

brown leather from the stack beside him. The book appeared completely blank at first sight, but if

one channeled mana into it in a very specific pattern, words would reveal themselves. “Who knows

how long it would have taken us to gather this kind of illegal expertise otherwise.”

Zach gave him a silent stare.

“What?” Zorian asked.

“Mind magic, soul magic, and now blood magic,” Zach said. “It’s like you’re trying to become as

sinister as possible…”

“What makes you think I want to learn blood magic?” Zorian asked, raising his eyebrow at him. “I

mean, you’re kind of right, but what gave me away?”

“The fact you’ve gone through those books three times already is kind of a dead giveaway,” Zach

said. “Since you’re so interested in the idea, I’m guessing there is more to it than stabbing and

bleeding people for power, right?”

“Yes,” Zorian nodded. “There are basically three distinct ways to use blood magic. The first one is to

simply use it as a power boost to enhance your spells in a critical moment. Needless to say, this is

not very healthy for the mage in question. Life force is critical to our health in a way that our mana

reserves aren’t. Even a slight expenditure of life force will leave you tired and weakened, and since

life force recovers far slower than mana reserves the effects may linger for days or weeks.”

“Huh,” said Zach thoughtfully. “That sounds kind of like drawing upon raw ambient mana to get out of

a bad situation, only better because you’re only risking your health instead of both your health and

sanity.”

“Pretty much, yes,” Zorian nodded. “As far as I can see, drawing upon one’s life force is superior in

virtually every way to drawing upon raw ambient mana.”

“But not every way?” Zach asked.

“Well, it is admittedly somewhat easier to kill yourself by overdrawing on your life force than it is by

drawing upon raw ambient mana,” Zorian admitted. “Still, the risks are quite manageable in my

opinion. Especially for us, what with our ability to undo any lasting damage caused by training or

abusing it.”

“Can we simply undo such lasting damage?” Zach frowned. “How are you so sure this won’t be a

problem?”

“That special soul awareness training Alanic is putting me through is essentially inflicting a form of

life force damage on me,” said Zorian. “Most of the really big symptoms go away after a few hours of

any particular session, but smaller ones linger for days afterwards. I tire more easily, lose most of my

appetite, suffer from random cramps and pains and so on.”

Zach seemed taken aback at his admission.

“You never mentioned that,” he said.

“I didn’t want to whine,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “It’s a small price to pay for what I’m getting.

Anyway, Alanic pushed me pretty hard in the previous restart, so these things never really had time

to die down. Instead, they just kept getting gradually worse as the restart progressed. They were

never crippling, but it was noticeable. When the restart ended, however, so did all the health issues I

had accumulated in the previous restart.”

“And now?” Zach asked, frowning. “Are you getting sicker all the time in this restart too?”

“No, I’m pacing myself better this time,” Zorian said.

“Good,” Zach said. “Even if you can get your health back, it can’t possibly be good for your mind to

spend an entire restart increasingly tired and in pain.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully. That… was a good point.

“So what are the other two ways of using blood magic?” Zach asked after a while, breaking Zorian

out of his thoughts.

“Right. The other two methods,” Zorian said. “Well, the second one is probably the most famous one.

Or should I say infamous? It’s basically ritually killing people to extract their life force, which is then

used to cast spells. Usually demon summoning.”

“What?” Zach asked, giving him a strange look. “Why demon summoning?”

“Casting spells with someone else’s personal mana is hard,” said Zorian. “It’s not toxic like raw

ambient mana, but other people’s mana is extremely hard to shape and control. This is especially

true when that mana was taken forcibly from the target. Using other people’s life force has the same

problem, only worse, since life force is so much more potent than regular mana. If you want to do

anything fancy with your stolen life force, you need to set up long and demanding rituals. It’s much

easier to just summon demons with your own mana and use stolen life force as payment for their

cooperation.”

“I thought demons asked for souls as payment,” Zach said.

“They accept both, and more besides,” Zorian shrugged. “It depends on the demon, really.”

“Well, whatever,” Zach said, clearly not terribly interested in the discussion about demons. “Since the

first method is kind of neat, but situational, and the second method sounds exactly as awful as I

feared, I’m guessing it was the third method that got you so interested in this stuff?”

“Right. The third method of using blood magic is related to enhancement rituals,” Zorian said, a bit of

excitement suddenly shining in his eyes.

Zorian launched into a quick explanation of the matter. Enhancement rituals were complex magical

rituals that granted permanent magical enhancements to the target. Superhuman strength, fast

healing, flight, fire-breathing, inherent ability to see mana… these were just some of the many

possibilities that a caster could acquire by investing in the field.

There was a price, of course, or else they would already be in widespread use. First of all, there was

no such thing as a safe and easy enhancement ritual – they were all very dangerous and difficult,

with the slightest mistake having the potential to kill, cripple or render insane. Secondly,

enhancement rituals effectively turned the target into a magical creature… and magical creatures

needed mana to live.

Every magical creature needed a certain amount of ambient mana just to stay alive and fuel their

magical abilities. The more powerful they were, the higher the ambient mana levels had to be to

support them. Stepping into an area too thin in ambient mana to support them wouldn’t immediately

kill them, but they would find themselves quickly weakening and wasting away. This was the main

reason why powerful monsters from the deeper levels of the Dungeon didn’t overrun everything –

they would effectively starve to death outside their home areas.

A human, regardless of the manner in which they acquired their magical abilities, also had to pay the

price to maintain their existence. A portion of their mana reserves was effectively lost, permanently

tied down in the maintenance of the magical enhancement. Their mana reserves’ maximum would

be permanently lowered.

It was a heavy price to pay, especially for a mage already suffering from below average mana

reserves, such as Zorian. Mages interested in magical enhancements had to think very carefully

about whether a particular enhancement was worth the price they would pay for it.

That said, while the price had to be paid… the size of the price was not set in stone. Depending on

the sophistication of the enhancement ritual, the quality of the materials used in the procedure and

the skill of the mage conducting it, the enhancement could either cost you half of your maximum

mana reserves or a mere tenth of it.

Blood magic, by virtue of interacting with a person’s very life force, could allow one to integrate a

magical ability extremely well into the target. So well, in fact, that the ability could become inheritable

– a true bloodline. In fact, quite a few bloodlines began in this very manner.

Employing blood magic to integrate an enhancement ritual made an already dangerous undertaking

even more risky… but the price for an enhancement so well integrated into the target was greatly

reduced.

There was still a price. Even with blood magic use, Zorian would still have to give up some of his

precious mana reserves to acquire permanent magical enhancements. However, the price was

reduced enough that Zorian was no longer willing to ignore the possibility outright.

“It’s not a priority, of course,” Zorian finished. “But I definitely intend to experiment with the field in

the future.”

Zach clacked his tongue in dissatisfaction.

“I have to say I’m not too fond of the idea,” he said. “Every time I think of ‘blood magic’, the image of

those shifter children from the previous restart pops into my mind.”

Zorian flinched a little at the reminder.

“But I trust you not to descend to that level of depravity,” Zach hurriedly added. “Just… stay away

from the whole ‘sacrifice people to summon demons’ part of the field, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Zorian nodded, a little more subdued.

He had originally wanted to point out that Zach could benefit from enhancement rituals even more

than Zorian would, but decided this wasn’t the best time to raise that issue.

- break -

Zorian leafed through one of the books on more exotic shaping exercises, searching for something

that seemed challenging, but not frustratingly so. Most of the exercises in it were pretty crazy stuff,

though, even by his standards. He tried to remember where they had found the book while he leafed

through its pages.

After a few seconds, he remembered. It was one of the books they had taken from the aranean

treasury. They had also tried to break into that secret room on the ceiling where the Cyorian web

presumably kept their real treasures, but failed. Despite Zorian’s growing skill at disarming magical

security systems, all they had succeeded in doing was triggering the safeguards and ruining

everything.

No matter. He would figure out how to get inside eventually. The setup was quite good, but it was no

longer as arcane to him as it once was. He was pretty sure he could figure out how to dismantle the

security spells in another five or six attempts.

“Why do you keep bothering with shaping exercises?” Zach asked him, not bothering to actually look

at him. He was too busy juggling a dizzying number of crystalized mana chunks to devote too much

attention to Zorian.

Showoff.

“Because I still haven’t reached the limit of my shaping ability,” Zorian said, sounding as if that was

the most obvious thing in the world.

“Zorian, you’re already starting to get better than me in terms of shaping skills,” Zach sighed. “And

my shaping skills are good enough to cast just about every type of magic out there. Including really

demanding ones like medical magic. What the hell do you even intend to do with crazy shaping skills

like that?”

“You can never have too much shaping skills,” Zorian told him.

“You spent too much time around Xvim,” Zach said. “The guy’s brainwashed you.”

“Every improvement of my shaping skills, no matter how minor, means I spend less mana on my

spells,” Zorian said. “For a low-mana guy like me, every drop of mana is precious. We can’t all be

inexhaustible mana monsters like you, Zach.”

“Hell yeah! I’m the only one awesome like that!” Zach said, puffing his chest in an exaggerated

fashion. Unfortunately for him, the action caused him to lose control over the chunks of crystalized

mana he was juggling. They clattered to the floor, some of them breaking up into smaller pieces

upon hitting the ground. “Oops?”

Zorian snorted in amusement.

“Did you ever find any clues about your mana reserves?” Zorian asked curiously. “There has to be a

reason why you deviate so much from everyone else when it comes to your mana reserves.”

“Sadly, no,” Zach said, stepping over the fallen crystals in order to sit down next to Zorian. “No one I

consulted about it has any idea how that is possible. Most people think it’s some kind of

undocumented bloodline of the Noveda. Although if so, it’s one that shows up rarely and irregularly,

otherwise the enemies of our House would have noticed it and noted it in the past.”

“I suppose there is no chance of you just being very, very lucky?” Zorian asked.

“It’s rather unlikely,” Zach said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that my shaping skills aren’t that

much worse than yours, despite the massive disparity between us in terms of mana reserves.”

“Of course,” Zorian nodded. “I assumed that’s just decades of practice adding up.”

“Ha. Well, it’s not just that,” Zach said. “The fact I was able to keep up with the academy curriculum

at all, even before the time loop, pretty much shuts down the theory I’m just lucky. I’m magnitude 50

in terms of mana reserves, but I can shape my mana as if I was magnitude 25 at most. That’s

too… convenient to be natural.”

“Hmm, yeah,” Zorian said thoughtfully. “Still, magnitude 25 isn’t small at all. I’m surprised you

managed to get your shaping skills as high as you did with that as your starting point.”

“I did have a lot of time to get it right,” Zach pointed out. “Considering you managed to catch up to

me in a measly five years or so, I don’t think it’s really that impressive. Especially since my shaping

skills are as high as they will ever be while yours just keep growing better and better.”

“I’m sure Xvim would be able to find you something to work on if you asked him for help with your

shaping,” Zorian teased.

Zach scowled at him, but then suddenly gained a thoughtful look on his face. He kept staring at

Zorian for a few seconds, making him increasingly uncomfortable.

“What?” Zorian asked impatiently.

“You know, if you’re really so determined about pushing your shaping skills to the best they could be,

you should invest some time in learning medical magic. Or at least, the diagnostic half of it. Many of

those diagnostic spells analyze the state of your magic, not just your body. You can use them to

map the flow of energies inside of you and get a better picture of your own limits.”

That did make sense, sort of. Zorian already had a decent feel for his own mana, thanks to Xvim’s

training, but this still sounded like an improvement in that regard.

“Maybe some other time,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “It sounds interesting, especially if I intend

to seriously mess around with blood magic, but it does not fit into my current plan.”

“We have a plan?” Zach asked with mock surprise.

“Okay, so it’s a very loose plan,” Zorian admitted. “But it does exist. What, do you want us to make a

step-by-step schedule or something?”

They decided to take a few hours to just relax and unwind. They played cards and board games,

exchanged stories and even had a drawing competition. Sadly, they couldn’t agree if it was Zach’s

portrait of Zorian or Zorian’s portrait of Zach that was better, so the contest was reluctantly

pronounced a draw.

They still had ten days to go. Zorian didn’t regret coming here in the slightest, but damn would he be

glad to be out of this place.

- break -

“Finally!” Zach said, spinning around with his arms stretched out to take in the forest around them.

“Finally, after years of imprisonment-”

“Only 30 days, actually,” Zorian corrected.

“It felt like years,” Zach continued stubbornly. “Damn, I’d never imagined seeing a bunch of trees

would make me so happy. Look, Zorian – trees! Trees!”

Zorian smiled, saying nothing. He too was glad to be out, but he wouldn’t dignify Zach’s

overdramatic antics with a verbal response. As if seeking to spite him, Zach walked up to one of the

trees and hugged it.

Zorian stopped walking and stared at the spectacle in amusement, wondering how long Zach would

keep this up. Especially since Zorian could see a large amount of ants travelling up and down the

tree in question, and they didn’t seem happy at Zach for disturbing them…

Suddenly, Zach flinched away from the tree with a muttered curse and started shaking the furiously

attacking ants off of him. Zorian couldn’t help it – he laughed loudly at Zach’s misfortune, and then

dodged backwards when Zach tried to shake off the ants in Zorian’s direction.

“Jerk,” Zach sniffed disdainfully.

“Come on,” Zorian said, motioning Zach to follow him. “We’re not far from Alanic’s place. Once we

give him the report we prepared for him in the Black Room, we can go and do a ‘glad we’re out’

celebration or something.”

During their month in the Black Room, Zach and Zorian had taken the time to compile all the

important information they had gleaned from the looted cultist texts. Zorian intended to follow up on

that information himself, of course, but it wouldn’t hurt to give that information to Alanic as well.

Maybe coming at the problem from two different directions would result in something.

“That does sound nice,” Zach said, trailing after him. “But I’m the one picking the place. No offense,

Zorian, but you have no idea how to have fun.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to regret this, but fine,” said Zorian.

“It’s not true fun unless you regret it immediately afterwards,” Zach said sagely.

Alanic was surprised to see them on his doorstep, but his surprise quickly turned pleasant when he

realized what they’d brought to him.

“Thank you for this,” he said. “I must say, I was a bit disturbed at how lightly you were taking this

invasion, time loop or no time loop. It’s comforting to realize you really are putting some work into

dealing with it.”

“It’s hard to stay outraged at something for years and years, especially when things get reset once a

month,” Zach said. “But we aren’t ignoring it.”

“Just remember to compile a similar report with your findings by the end of the restart,” Zorian

added.

“Of course,” Alanic said. “What do you intend to do now?”

“For the rest of the day? Get drunk,” said Zach. Ugh, was that what he was planning? “Afterwards,

well… I guess me and Zorian will continue our search for the simulacrum spell. I’m sure I

encountered it somewhere in the past, but I just can’t seem to find it. Why is a spell like that so rare

anyway?”

Zach probably didn’t actually expect Alanic to answer that, but the warrior priest gave him an answer

all the same.

“It’s because the simulacrum is one of the major stepping stones towards becoming a lich,” Alanic

said. “If you can cast that, you’re halfway there already. Not to mention the spell itself being a

complete nightmare for criminal investigators. So anyone who is known to have it is watched more

intently by the Mage Guild, unless they are very closely aligned with them.”

“So… don’t tell anyone we can cast simulacrum, is what you’re saying?” Zach asked, largely

rhetorically. Alanic gave him a blank stare. “Yeah, I figured. But wait, doesn’t that mean I should be

looking for the spell primarily among groups of necromancers and liches?”

“Yes?” Alanic said, then frowned. “Hold on. You know the locations of necromancer groups and lich

sanctums? Just… how many of these locations are we talking about?”

Fifteen minutes later, it had been determined that Alanic would join them on their simulacrum

search. And also that Zach would sit down and write down a list of all necromancers, liches, demon

worshippers, slaver compounds and other criminal sites he knew of… or at least the ones that he

still remembered the exact location of, since he had forgotten quite a few of them by now. Unlike

Zorian, he had never acquired some method of guaranteed perfect memory, and had never been all

that good at remembering details anyway.

Zorian had a feeling that Alanic’s notes at the end of this restart would no longer be as small and

sparse as they’d been at the end of the previous one.

- break -

“This is bullshit,” Zach complained, his voice slurring slightly. He downed another glass of hard liquor

and narrowed his eyes at Zorian. “There is no way you’re so good at holding your liquor. You’re

cheating somehow. You cheater.”

Well, he was certainly right about that. As a point of fact, Zorian was using the trick taught to him by

Haslush, so long ago, and stealthily transmuting his alcohol into sugar. But why would he ever admit

that?

He just downed his glass of sugar water and gave Zach a bright, self-satisfied grin.

- break -

In the Ishekatara Sea – the southern sea enclosed by the two ‘prongs’ of the Altazian continent –

there was a pirate ship. Well, there were quite a few of them actually, but this one was important

because its crew was mostly composed out of skeletons. The only living crew were a trio of brothers,

each of whom was a necromancer of some skill.

The Skeleton Pirates, as they were commonly called by their victims, had been living a pretty good

life until now. The trade companies in charge of most merchant ships were notoriously cheap,

staffing their cargo ships with the smallest crew they could get away with. Meanwhile, skeletons

required no food or pay, and could be packed like sardines into the pirate ship’s cargo hold without

ever complaining about inhuman conditions or getting sick. As such, when a metaphorical skeleton

crew of a merchant ship met the literal skeleton crew of the pirate ship, the result was rarely in

doubt. The living sailors were severely outnumbered, and probably reliant on guns for defense,

which didn’t work very well against skeletons.

The only issue was closing in on their victims before they could get away, but the pirate ship the

three brothers used was special. Most of their victims wouldn’t even know they were coming until it

was too late, and quite a few surrendered their cargo immediately when they realized what they

were up against. After that, the skeleton pirates looted everything, throwing some of the skeletons

overboard to make space for their new loot – the skeletons were easily replaceable, after all – and

went off to sell their ill-gotten gains.

Sadly for them, their comfortable existence had come to an end. The ship’s sails were burning, there

were several gaping holes blown in the hull, and the sounds of magical combat emanated from its

interior. This time, it was the skeleton pirates who were getting boarded.

Inside the ship in question, Zorian was fighting a horde of skeletons.

“This is so stupid,” he complained, creating a shining beam of severing force to cut the approaching

horde at the knees. He learned the hard way that destroying their heads did very little and that he

needed to cut off their limbs if he wanted to take them out of the fight. “Why am I the one fighting

mindless skeletons instead of going after living mages vulnerable to mind magic? Zach and Alanic

better have a good explanation for-”

The ship shook from another explosion, but Zorian telekinetically glued his legs to the floor beneath

him and thus managed to stay on his feet. The skeletons were not so lucky, and most ended up

falling to the ground, providing an excellent opportunity to Zorian for finishing some of them off and

maneuvering himself into a better position.

He had to hand it to the three pirate brothers running this ship – they’d put some pretty good wards

on the vessel, or else it would have long since turned into a pile of sawdust from the intensity of the

fight currently taking place. Though now that he thought of it, the pirates were probably powering

such strong wards with the souls of their fallen enemies, so maybe it wasn’t as impressive as it first

looked.

Or maybe the skeletons doubled as mana generators for the wards in addition to being the

disposable crew of the ship? There was a certain amount of beauty in making skeletons pull double

duty like that. Hmm…

Before the skeleton horde could fully recover and swarm him again, Zorian conjured an animated

mass of ectoplasmic threads beside him and started herding all of the skeletons into it. Soon, the

entire group was restrained and compacted together into a giant skeletal ball. Zorian then dragged

said ball to the nearest hole in the hull and threw it out of the ship.

He then repeated the move with the other skeleton group in the ship. Now, if he was right about his

theory the whole warding setup should-

Oh, there we go – the wards were already failing. Wow, they didn’t put even the slightest amount of

mana storage somewhere as a precaution against a ploy like this? Or at least set things up so they

would gradually fade away instead of suddenly crashing down like this? He retracted his earlier

praise, this was very amateurish ward making.

He set off towards the heart of the ship, where Zach and Alanic were fighting the actual masters of

the skeleton pirates, but when he finally got there the fighting was already over.

“For a group you claimed were such easy targets, it sure took you a long time to finally bring them

down,” Zorian commented while walking over to them.

“I assume you’re behind the ship’s wards failing?” Alanic asked, tapping a nearby chest with his

battle staff in order to trigger an electrical trap placed on it. Zorian nodded. “Thank you for that. They

were very annoying. It has been a while since I fought in an area that suppresses fire magic so

firmly.”

“I’m sorry, it’s been a long time since I fought them and I totally forgot they had these fancy wards

covering their ship,” said Zach, knocking on his head with a nervous laugh. “After a while, I just sank

their entire ship instead of trying to fight the crew, so my perspective on how easy they were to fight

was a little skewed.”

Hearing that, Zorian didn’t have much hope that the ship’s treasure stash held the simulacrum spell.

Still, in the interest of being thorough, he joined Zach and Alanic in disarming all the traps defending

the treasure stash and searching through the contents. Even if simulacrum wasn’t here, there could

be something else of note inside. But eventually…

“Found it!” Zach shouted, triumphantly holding a pitch black scroll case above his head.

“What, the pirates actually had the simulacrum spell in their stash?” Zorian asked, surprised.

“Yup, this is it. I remember it very well because the scroll case kept destroying the contents

whenever I tried to open it, and it was so infuriating. Then I finally managed to get to the scroll inside

and it turned out it was just a simulacrum spell. Man, I was so angry about that…”

Zorian stared at the black scroll case for a moment before motioning for Zach to open it. To his

surprise, Zach didn’t bother unraveling the defensive trap on the scroll case or using a proper

unlocking method – instead he sent some kind of magical pulse into the scroll case, causing it to fall

apart into hundreds of jagged little pieces, as if it was suddenly sliced apart by hundreds of invisible

blades.

Well… he supposed that was one way to defeat the trap…

“May I?” Alanic asked, extending his hand towards the piece of rolled-up leather that had been in the

destroyed scroll case. Zach shared a look with Zorian, who shrugged noncommittally. The scroll was

promptly handed to Alanic, who unfurled it and scanned the contents.

“It’s legitimate,” Alanic eventually announced. “Some of the simulacrum versions are incomplete or

even malicious versions meant as traps for the unwary, but this seems like the real deal to me.”

Huh. Zorian had to admit he hadn’t even considered that possibility. He knew that some of the spells

out there were fake or traps, but it was rarely a problem, especially if one was careful about their

spell sources. He supposed that for illegal or highly restricted spells like this, the percentage of fake

spells was much higher than average. Especially if they came on a mysterious scroll like this instead

of a published book or something.

Alanic handed the leather scroll to Zorian, who slowly read through it.

Simulacrum, as Zorian already knew, created an ectoplasmic copy of the caster. The copy was fully

autonomous, could think and act on its own judgement, and even cast its own spells. However, it

had no soul and no mana reserves of its own. Instead, both of these were shared with the caster

who made it. That meant that aside from the initial cost of creation for the simulacrum, as well as the

running cost of maintaining its existence, the caster also had to pay for every single spell the

simulacrum decided to cast.

He explained as much to Zach, who had read the description of the spell once but had since

forgotten most of the details about it.

“It’s still useful,” Zorian noted. “Having another copy of me to help me with purely mental tasks would

be infinitely useful. But it’s not quite as convenient as I thought it would be.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of disappointing,” Zach said. “It’s good as bait and an additional worker to boss

around, but I don’t think you’ll be using it too much in battle.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Zorian said. “Sure, I won’t be spamming double fireballs with my

simulacrum or anything, but my telepathic abilities are quite cheap in terms of mana costs. And they

are more useful as a devastating opener than as a long-term tool in battle, so it would be pretty

useful if I could make twice as many telepathic attacks whenever I make my move. Double the

Zorian, double the mind magic.”

“As if your mind magic wasn’t terrifying enough as it is,” Zach grumbled good-naturedly.

“There are two things you should keep in mind,” Alanic said suddenly. “One is that no simulacrum is

an entirely flawless copy of yourself. Especially in the beginning, the copies are bound to be greatly

degraded version of you, lacking the full extent of your abilities. As your proficiency with the spell

grows, you will be able to get increasingly better replicas… but in the end, the simulacrum is just a

reflection of you, rather than a flawless copy. This is especially obvious if you keep the spell going

for long periods of time. I strongly recommend that you don’t keep your simulacrum active for more

than a day, or else they will start developing their own personalities and goals that may run counter

to your own. People have been killed by their own simulacrums in the past. Considering your

simulacrum will be a master mind mage like you yourself apparently are…”

“Yeah, I get the picture,” said Zorian, wincing slightly. “Don’t leave the simulacrum running for too

long, or it may decide to overwrite my mind with its own or something similar.”

“Yes,” Alanic nodded. “The second thing you should keep in mind is that, while a simulacrum isn’t

identical to you in every way, it is a replica of you in most ways. For instance, some people react

really badly to the knowledge that they are a copy of a person, which causes their simulacrums to

break down or go berserk immediately after being created. I don’t think you and Zach will have that

kind of problem, considering the supposed nature of the time loop, but it’s something to keep in mind

if you ever decide to share the spell with someone else. Similarly, if you don’t like doing something,

your simulacrum won’t like doing it either… so it’s a bad idea to foist things you hate upon your

simulacrums. This also means that if you can’t bring yourself to sacrifice your life for another,

chances are your simulacrum won’t want to sacrifice itself for your sake either.”

In other words, the simulacrum wasn’t his personal slave and would only obey orders that he himself

would be willing to obey. Fair enough.

After a few more warnings and clarification from Alanic, the three of them left the burning ship and

returned to Eldemar. The skeleton pirates would trouble people no longer.

- break -

Zach and Zorian spent the rest of the restart attacking the Cyorian cultists and occasionally going off

on further raids on locations Zach remembered from his past. Since they had already found the

simulacrum spell, these excursions were technically unnecessary, but they both decided to keep on

doing them anyway. Zorian because he wanted the combat experience and had interest in some of

the loot that Zach had never cared about, and Zach because he found fighting fun. Alanic joined

them often as well, though as the restart gradually approached its end, he became more and more

busy with his investigation into the invaders. Xvim was also offered a spot in these raids, but

declined to go, saying he was ‘too old for that now’.

Four days after Zach and Zorian had left the time research facility beneath Cyoria, the place went

into an uproar. It took them four days, but eventually they did realize that something was wrong with

the way Zach and Zorian had used the Black Room. Of course, by this time Zach and Zorian were

long gone and there was nothing they could do about it, but still. Zorian investigated the issue to see

what they had done wrong, and was amused to find that what had really outed them in the end was

the fact that they had never submitted a follow-up report to the proper government department.

Apparently each group that used the Black Room had to submit a report, in triplicate, explaining in

detail how they had used the Black Room and what their gains were. Since Zach and Zorian had

never bothered to do so, the administrative assistant in charge of preserving the reports complained

to the research staff, eventually triggering the investigation. If they had just sent the stupid piece of

paper to the government office, chances were that no one would have said a thing. Zorian doubted

anyone even read those things.

Three days before the end of the restart, Zach and Zorian finally executed a plan that had been in

the works since the very beginning of the restart – they broke into the Royal Palace of Eldemar,

quietly infiltrating the place at first, and then just blasting their way inside when they were discovered

half-way through.

They only got about two-thirds of the way in before the palace defenses began to overwhelm them

and they were forced to flee, but even this failed foray into the place told them two very important

things.

First of all, the royal treasury actually did hold one piece of the Key within its depths. The dagger, if

Zorian was interpreting what his marker was telling him correctly. They would have to figure out a

way to break into the royal treasury if they wanted to assemble all five pieces.

Secondly, trying to break into the Eldemar Royal Palace caused an unbelievable amount of outrage.

The palace guards had followed them for hours after their failed intrusion, only giving up when Zach

and Zorian had descended into the deep reaches of the Dungeon to lose them. And even then, that

had just given them a few hours of peace, during which Eldemar’s royals had apparently been

organizing a state-wide manhunt for them.

It had been three days since, and the manhunt had never ended. All the newspapers and town

gossips were talking about the failed break-in at the Royal Palace, and there was apparently a huge

bounty placed on their heads. The bounty was a bit of a joke, since the Crown clearly didn’t know

much about them – as evidenced by the lack of pictures or any clear descriptions in the bounty

posters plastered everywhere. Thank the gods that both of them were experts in anti-divination

spells and that they had the fancy red robes they’d stolen from the cultists.

Still, while the Eldemar forces didn’t know their identities, they clearly had some method of tracking

down ‘those two people who tried to break into the palace’, because they unerringly kept coming

after them every once in a while. The two of them were constantly on the run, with the longest period

of time they had to sit down and relax being about six hours. It was frustrating, especially since

neither Zach nor Zorian could figure out how their pursuers kept tracking them down.

“See, I was totally right in saying we should wait for the end of the restart before trying this!” Zach

said as they ran towards the small forest nearby, the red robe he was wearing distorting his voice in

unnerving ways.

“So what? I never disputed that!” Zorian responded, his voice similarly distorted.

Before they could say anything else, an ear-piercing screech sounded above them, quickly followed

by another. Zorian didn’t even have to look at the source of the screeches to know it was those two

giant crowned eagles coming after them, each with a pair of battlemages riding them. That thrice-

damned group was incredibly annoying, always responding first to their every move, cutting off their

retreat routes and disrupting their spells until the rest of the pursuers could catch up to them.

Unfortunately, the eagles were fast and agile flyers, and the battlemages riding them were incredibly

good, so getting rid of them before their allies showed up was virtually impossible. By now, Zach and

Zorian no longer tried to engage them – that just wasted time that could be used for running away.

“I don’t think we can keep this up for long!” Zach told him as he deflected some kind of multicolored

lightning bolt into a nearby bush, which immediately exploded from the force of the spell. “How

long?”

Zorian glanced at the city of Cyoria looming nearby. Though it might appear to their pursuers that

they were just randomly fleeing around, the two of them had actually been deliberately luring them

here. The end of the restart was fast approaching, and the invasion was about to begin…

“I think it will start right-”

Before Zorian could finish the statement, numerous artillery magic flares rose into the air from the

hills surrounding Cyoria. The invasion of the city had officially begun.

Zorian grumbled discontentedly. Damn reality always ruined his dramatic timing.

“Nevermind, it’s starting!” he said out loud.

“Yeah, thanks a lot. I would have never known if you hadn’t told me,” Zach said sarcastically.

Zorian said nothing, simply stepping closer to his fellow time traveler. Immediately after, Zach

finished his spell and they were both enveloped into a semi-transparent white sphere, which then

shot into the air with dizzying speed.

Giant crowned eagles were apparently fast and agile enough to follow after the sphere, which

surprised Zorian more than it probably should have. Still, the two of them had an entire army of

surprised invaders to serve as their unwilling meat walls – the sphere unerringly homed in on the

largest flock of iron beaks they could find and flew straight through it, splattering numerous birds to

death and pissing the entire flock off.

Sadly for the pursuing eagles and their riders, furious iron beaks aren’t very discriminating about

their choice of targets. Especially when one target was clearly more vulnerable than the other and

was clearly trailing after it, suggesting that they were working together.

The two of them didn’t stick around after that – Zach directed the sphere into a nearby building,

where it smashed into the wall and crashed inside. This largely got them outside of the iron beak line

of fire, since the inside of a building didn’t let them concentrate their forces much and they had a

much more attractive target outside anyway. Thus, once they had killed the handful of brave birds

coming after them, they just left the area by teleporting to different sections of the city.

Truthfully, Zorian expected him and Zach to spend the entire night leading their pursuers into a

series of conflicts with the invaders. Not because they hoped to get something by doing that, but

rather because they felt their pursuers were just that stubborn. However, it would seem they had

been uncharitable to their opponents, because after the third time Zach and Zorian led the entire

pursuit group into an Ibasan army group, they seemed to realize the scale of what was happening

and gave up on going after them in favor of helping the beleaguered Cyorian defenders.

Encountering Quatach-Ichl during that third confrontation and losing both of their giant eagles in the

process may have had something to do with that.

Currently, Zach and Zorian were sitting on the roof of the Academy’s highest building and observing

the fighting.

“Wow,” Zach said. “You know, those mage hunters are kind of impressive when they’re fighting

someone else.”

“Yeah,” Zorian agreed.

“So what are we going to do now?” Zach asked. “Just sit down and watch the world burn for a few

hours until the loop resets?”

“No,” Zorian answered, shaking his head. “I have a better idea. Let’s rob the academy library.”

Zach looked at him funny, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I’m serious,” Zorian said. “I know there is probably nothing really that important in there, but I have

always wondered what kind of spells are kept behind those higher level sections that I was never

allowed to go to.”

“That… is a good point,” Zach said. “I can’t believe I never tried that myself. If nothing else, just so I

can say I did it.”

And thus, for the next few hours, Zach and Zorian rampaged across the Academy library. While the

invaders and the city defenders fought bitter battles across Cyoria, the two of them were peacefully

searching through restricted texts, unbothered by the librarians and other security, who had long

since fled the building in light of the invasion.

When the restart finally ended and everything went black, Zorian’s only thought was that he hadn’t

finished the book he was holding…

…and that they were definitely going to do this again.

Chapter 063

The March of Days

To the north of Knyazov Dveri, deep inside the northern wilderness, there was a small,

inconspicuous gully with an equally unremarkable cave carved into one of its walls. It was unlikely

that anyone who stumbled upon the area would think much of it, though if they were very perceptive

or experienced in the ways of the forest, they might have noted that the place felt surprisingly…

peaceful.

Yet, it was anything but. The inhabitant of the cave was vicious and powerful, and many creatures

had paid with their lives for trespassing into its area. The ‘peaceful atmosphere’ was simply the

result of the beast killing anything edible or threatening in its immediate domain, which caused the

larger and more intelligent creatures to avoid the area.

Despite knowing all of this, someone was about to barge into the place and provoke the grey hunter

mother lurking inside the cave. Floating high in the air above the area was a wooden platform

densely covered in crystalline glyphs, and standing upon it was a teenager that looked like Zorian

but arguably wasn’t.

He was Zorian’s simulacrum, and he had been sent here to die.

From his safe location high in the sky, the simulacrum stared at the pitch black entrance to the grey

hunter’s lair, nervously fiddling with the watch-like device in his pocket that controlled the platform he

was standing on. It would be lying to say he wasn’t apprehensive about what he was expected to do.

True, this had been his own idea, back when he and the original were still one and the same, but…

well, it was one thing to decide to create a copy of yourself to serve as bait for a giant man-eating

spider and quite another to come into existence and realize you are to be that bait.

He was made in his creator’s image… and Zorian? He had a very strong survival instinct. He

couldn’t remember ever being suicidal, and even after being trapped inside a time loop he shied

away from risking his life without a good reason.

He was scared. There, he said it. He was not just apprehensive, he was flat-out scared! How could

he not be? He was going to be torn apart by a giant spider and he was supposed to just stand there

and let it happen. It was…

He shook his head, doing his best to calm his thoughts. He chose this. He remembered making this

plan, remembered all the arguments for why it had to be this way, and it was all just as valid now as

it was then. It was only his own cowardice that was making him hesitate now. And while Zorian had

never been, nor was likely to ever be some kind of paragon of bravery… he was better than this.

Still. Less than an hour ago, he had been willing to sacrifice his copy for this. He distinctly

remembered this. It felt like his own decision, even though he technically didn’t even exist back then.

What did it say about him that he had been so cavalier about the decision back then, but now that he

was to be said sacrifice, he found himself having doubts?

One of the rings hanging around his neck suddenly vibrated for a moment. The original was trying to

contact him. He sent a telepathic probe into the ring in question, which was actually a miniature

telepathic relay, and formed a connection with the mind of true Zorian. He briefly wondered if it was

possible to use their soul as a telepathic conduit in lieu of their artificial relays, since they shared one

and all. However, he knew too little about soul magic to judge how difficult such an idea would be, so

he put the thought aside.

[Ready?] the original Zorian asked.

The simulacrum hesitated, just for a moment. The original seemed… confident. The fear and anxiety

that plagued the simulacrum were entirely absent from his progenitor’s thoughts. Instead, the original

seemed expectant, even excited. What vast differences in thinking, and they had diverged so

recently from one another…

Well, no matter. Strangely enough, he didn’t blame the original for his attitude. What sense would

that make? In the past several restarts since Zorian had acquired the simulacrum spell, he had

relentlessly practiced it. By now, any copy he produced was a pretty good rendition of the original.

The simulacrum was confident that he was cut from the same cloth as the original Zorian, so

chances are that he would have behaved the same if their positions were reversed somehow.

If he cursed Zorian, he cursed himself.

[I’m ready,] the simulacrum sent back.

After a moment’s hesitation, he also enclosed his thoughts on using their soul as a telepathic conduit

inside a memory packet and sent them over the link to the original. Just in case the original Zorian

didn’t have the same idea for some reason.

There was a short pause as the original seemed to consider things. When he finally responded a few

seconds later, it was with but a single word.

[Go.]

The simulacrum didn’t argue or stall for time – he immediately pressed a button on the watch-like

device in his pocket, causing the wooden platform to plunge downward with dizzying speed.

Somehow, now that the moment of truth had finally come, he was able to discard all his worry and

hesitation and act decisively. He was still scared, but there was also determination there… or maybe

it was just resignation? Either way, as he watched the ground rapidly get closer and closer, he knew

that he could do it. He could play the role he was meant to play.

Though he was currently standing on a piece of wood hurtling towards the cold, unforgiving ground,

the simulacrum wasn’t worried about crashing into the ground and dying. The platform wasn’t

actually falling in the classical sense, as evidenced by the fact it stayed aligned horizontally with the

ground instead of flipping around randomly through the air. It was a magical travel device executing

a controlled descent, and the simulacrum had full faith in its construction. He remembered making it,

after all.

No, all of his worry and attention was being directed at the unassuming cave entrance in the gully.

He had come to terms with being torn apart by a giant murder-spider in the near future (well, mostly),

but whether or not his death would achieve anything was still an open question. The plan wasn’t

complicated – he just had to lure the grey hunter mother into stepping onto the very wooden platform

beneath his feet, which would cause the multitude of traps and restrictive wards anchored to it to

activate, sealing the spider’s fate. The problem was that the grey hunter was quite canny about

recognizing traps. Thus his current method of entry. In theory, suddenly dropping out of the sky right

into the middle of the grey hunter’s territory should catch the spider off-guard and enrage it enough

for it to rush out and attack him without making sure it wasn’t blundering into a trap.

In theory. In practice, the grey hunter was annoyingly unpredictable. This wasn’t the first time Zach

and Zorian were fighting the thing, and their previous clashes with it were… well, they managed to

eke out a win in the end. For a certain definition of ‘win’. The grey hunter was dead in the end, yes,

but in one restart Zach ended up being bitten and couldn’t cast anything for the rest of the restart,

and in the other Zorian had both of his legs shattered so thoroughly it took him an entire week to

heal, even with the best medical care money can buy. Gods that was painful. Thankfully, he was just

a copy mind inhabiting an ectoplasmic shell, so he wouldn’t be suffering through a repeat of that

experience – he had no bones to break, after all.

Hopefully the trap would work. It would be nice to get the spider’s egg sack intact (something they

hadn’t managed to accomplish up until now), if only so he could rub the achievement into

Silverlake’s face. But barring that, Zorian would settle for a proper victory instead of a pyrrhic win

that left them in recovery for the rest of the restart.

The simulacrum frowned. You know what? He wasn’t taking chances with this. If he had to die, he at

least wanted his death to be meaningful and achieve something. Thus, just before he hit the ground,

he dipped into the mana reserves he shared with the original and cast a hasting spell on himself. He

immediately felt the world slow down around him, the spell accelerating his personal time flow by

about two and a half times. This was not part of the plan – in fact, the original was probably cursing

him right now to hell and back for wasting a good chunk of his precious mana reserves – but the

haste effect might let him react fast enough to the grey hunter’s moves to actually achieve his

mission, so the original would just have to deal with it.

The platform hit the ground with surprising gentleness, the powerful wards emanating from it blunting

the force of the impact until it could barely be felt. But the simulacrum still felt it and stumbled in

place for a second. He recovered almost immediately, but by then the grey hunter was already

making its move.

What a fast response. It would seem they had underestimated the murder-spider once again,

because less than a second since the platform touched the ground, the grey hunter was already

jumping out of the cave entrance. It must have detected the intrusion while the simulacrum was still

in the air and was already on the move by the time the wooden platform hit the ground.

With his accelerated perceptions, the simulacrum could see the furry, many-legged body of the grey

hunter sailing through the air in all of its terrible detail. The huge glossy fangs, the soulless black

eyes, the quill-like fur covering its entire body…

The simulacrum was not ashamed to admit he froze in place for a moment. He regained his wits

quickly though, just in time to see the grey hunter slam into the ground next to the gully, kicking up

dust and gravel as it immediately launched itself back into the air again. He watched the beast

intently, trying to think of the best way to keep it contained on the platform long enough for the traps

to fully activate. But something was wrong – the grey hunter was going too high and too fast. At that

speed and at that angle of ascent, the spider was…

Damn it, it was going to overshoot his location entirely! It wasn’t taking the bait. Maybe it could

understand that the platform was a trap, or maybe it knew that the simulacrum was just an

ectoplasmic construct and thus didn’t find him threatening enough – whatever it was, the grey hunter

decided to completely ignore Zorian’s simulacrum and the platform he was standing on.

At that moment, the simulacrum was torn between feeling amused and being annoyed. On one

hand, having the murder-spider ignore him entirely after all that inner turmoil he went through was

kind of funny… but the fact that the spider was clearly going after the original instead was bad and

objectively the worst way this mission could have ended. A simulacrum like him was a lot more

expendable than the original was.

He thought about trying to telekinetically snare the grey hunter and draw it into the trap, or get its

attention by using mind magic… but his memories told him that could never work. The grey hunter

had insanely high magic resistance, and trying to affect it with magic directly was like trying to hold a

live eel… an exercise in frustration. Instead, he tried something else. As the grey hunter was passing

overhead, the simulacrum created a thick rope of magical force and tried to use it to entangle the

grey hunter and reel it in onto the platform. Unfortunately, the spider twisted its body in mid-air,

avoiding the rope by a centimeter or so. It then managed to right itself fast enough to land solidly on

its feet, landing a good distance behind the platform.

Frustrated at the way he was failing his mission, the simulacrum tried to get the grey hunter’s

attention by firing a ball of entangling ectoplasmic threads at its back. He knew from experience that

the grey hunter was strong enough to break through the spell, but, humiliatingly enough, the spell

didn’t even hit it properly. The spider reacted instantly, rolling to the side to avoid the bulk of the

spell. A few threads did manage to snag it, wrapping themselves tightly around its legs, but the grey

hunter just accelerated forward, gouging out clumps of grass from the forest floor as its legs sought

greater traction, and the threads that tried to restrain it snapped like they were made of straw. It then

sped off into the distance, zigzagging a few times to avoid the handful of overpowered magic

missiles the simulacrum had sent after it as a parting gift. Despite being overpowered and cast in

haste, the missiles were only faintly visible, existing only as a slight discoloration in the air – a

testament to Zorian’s mastery of the spell. Despite this, not only could the grey hunter evidently

perceive them without even turning around, it moved with sufficient speed and agility to defeat their

homing function and dodge them anyway. That shouldn’t even be possible, damn it!

The simulacrum stared at the dust trail left behind by the grey hunter, taking a deep breath to calm

himself (even though he was just an ectoplasmic construct and didn’t really need to breathe). The

damn spider didn’t even have the decency to turn around and pay attention to him upon being

attacked, never mind being tempted to step on the platform. It treated the simulacrum like it was just

a particularly aggressive rock or something, instead of an actual threat!

Well. His mission was certainly a failure, but maybe he could help the original in some other way. He

started running after the monster and sent a message to the original through the relay hanging

around his neck, asking for directions. The original had been observing the event through his

senses, so he didn’t have to explain much. He was immediately told to ‘observe only and stop

wasting mana for now’. Wow, what a jerk. He supposed he had been a little wasteful with their

shared mana reserves, but come on! He was just trying to salvage the situation somehow.

When he finally caught up to the grey hunter, he came upon the sight of a battlefield. Zach and

Zorian were both engaging the grey hunter, along with a group of golems (two big and slow ones for

defense and ten smaller and faster ones to act as distractions). The grey hunter hurled itself at

Zorian – the original one – only to crash into a thick multicolored plate of force and bounce off. Zach

tried to take advantage of this and impale it, sending a trio of black javelins at it, but the spider

reoriented itself in an instant, dancing around the projectiles like a leaf in the wind and hurled itself

back towards Zorian again the moment its legs touched the ground. It zigzagged across the ground,

kicking up dust and gravel and unerringly dodging every trap that had been hidden in the area

beforehand, including some purely non-magical ones like hidden pits and iron bear traps. Zach did

his best to hit it with a multitude of projectile spells, and Zorian directed his golems to block it and try

to push it into one of said projectiles or the traps it was avoiding. It was all for naught. The grey

hunter’s agility and speed was unreal, and the few times it ended up boxed in by the attacks and the

traps, it unfailingly identified which attack it could tank without getting hurt.

Zach launched a dense sphere of rock at the back of the boxed-in spider, only for it to kick back with

its rear legs like a horse and shatter the sphere of magically hardened rock like it was just loosely

packed earth. Zorian managed to hit it with a powerful incinerating ray, but all that did was burn off

some of the dense ‘fur’ covering its body and didn’t seem to do any lasting damage. Zach trapped it

in a cage of dense, layered force, but the grey hunter mother shattered each one like it was made of

paper and burst free before Zach and Zorian could strengthen the prison enough to hold her. One of

the smaller golems managed to latch onto the grey hunter’s back; without hesitation, the spider

rammed itself backwards into a tree, causing the golem to let go.

The simulacrum watched all this, observing the battle and waiting for the right moment to act. He

knew that, despite Zach and Zorian’s apparent lack of success at damaging the grey hunter, the

situation was under control at the moment. The two of them had fought the beast twice already, and

though they suffered a heavy price each time, they also learned how to keep it at bay and put

pressure at it. The only reason why the grey hunter hadn’t fallen yet was that neither Zach nor Zorian

were trying their hardest to kill it yet. They were still hoping to get its eggs relatively intact, so they

couldn’t use area of effect spells as indiscriminately as they should against an opponent like this.

Sure enough, while the battle failed to kill the grey hunter, it was steadily getting pushed back

towards the wooden platform as the minutes ticked by. The spider seemed to realize it was getting

herded into a trap, however, and stubbornly refused to get pushed onto it.

Finally, after both Zach and Zorian were starting to run out of mana and get physically exhausted,

and all but two of the smaller golems had been reduced to scrap, the two finally managed to trick the

grey hunter into a trap. Zorian deliberately left himself somewhat open, casting his defensive plane

of force relatively high, and the grey hunter took the bait and tried to slide under it to get to Zorian.

Perhaps it was getting tired itself and decided to take the chance? Regardless, Zorian had been

ready for it and promptly materialized a dimensional gate in front of himself… a gate whose exit point

led straight onto the wooden platform. The spider tried to twist itself in mid-air to dodge it, but Zach

used a powerful gust of wind to push it in anyway.

And then, just as it was going to slam into the wooden platform and get snared, the grey hunter

revealed its final trump card – it shot a strand of silk out of its back end and used it as a lifeline to

reel itself to the side of the platform, avoiding it entirely.

“Okay, that does it,” Zach growled. “We’re taking it down, damn the eggs.”

“Fine,” Zorian agreed unhappily.

The simulacrum could understand the original’s frustration. They were so close to total victory…

One of the remaining golems tried to push the grey hunter onto the platform again, only for the

spider to do a backflip – there is no other way to describe it – and land right on top of the golem. It

then pushed itself off, using the golem’s head as leverage to propel itself away from the risk zone,

and shoved the golem straight into the platform in the process.

…and yet so far away.

A giant firestorm suddenly consumed the entire area, courtesy of Zach, and for the first time in the

battle, the grey hunter screamed. It was fast and tough, but it couldn’t dodge a spell that affected

such a wide area and a fire so intense was beyond it to fully shrug off. It was not dead, but large

patches of its fur were gone and two of its eyes had burst from the heat.

Its egg sack was reduced to ash in its entirety.

The grey hunter mother let loose an ear-splitting screech of rage for her destroyed eggs and went

completely berserk. No longer caring to avoid damage, the spider rushed at Zach, who it correctly

identified as the source of the firestorm, at even greater speeds than before. It charged straight

through the hail of projectiles launched at it by both Zach and Zorian, losing a leg and another eye in

the process, and kept going. It almost succeeded at sinking its fangs into Zach’s chest but Zorian

managed to recall the boy away before the strike could connect.

A berserk grey hunter was dangerous. They became less cautious and more willing to tank damage

in order to inflict some of their own in turn. In their previous clashes with the grey hunter mother, they

had been caught off-guard by the change in tactics, which was how Zorian had gotten both of his

legs broken. This time, though, they were ready for it… and for someone who knew what was

coming, a berserk grey hunter was actually easier to fight than a calm one.

An area-wide freezing spell from Zach, a ball of shredding force from Zorian, and a collective

sacrifice from the remaining golems dog-piling it and self-destructing themselves, and the grey

hunter was finally dead. Its mangled corpse looked like a living warzone, but as far as the

simulacrum was concerned, the fact it still remained in one piece after everything it went through is

already amazing.

“It’s a shame,” the original said, approaching the corpse to inspect it. “I really thought we had a

chance of getting its eggs this time.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t get bitten again,” Zach said, rubbing his chest as if trying to ward off phantom

pain. “Thanks for the save back there. Anyway, you shouldn’t be too greedy. This thing is a pain to

fight, even when we’re going all-out, never mind trying to capture it. We still have its corpse in

reasonably good condition, which means we can make those awesome magic perception potions

again. That’s reward enough if you ask me.”

The simulacrum smiled, remembering how shocked Lukav had been when they had brought a Grey

Hunter corpse to him in one of the restarts and asked him to turn it into an enhancement potion.

Unfortunately, grey hunters were so rare and dangerous to hunt that there was no publicly available

potion recipes involving them, nevermind a specific one that granted the imbiber its senses. Lukav

couldn’t do it. It was beyond his pay-grade, he said. All he could do was give them a list of better

alchemists that could be able to help them, though he warned them that even they would probably

have to invent a new potion from scratch in order to fulfill their request. Zach and Zorian had to

spend two weeks visiting various potion makers recommended by Lukav till they found one that was

capable of working with the corpse in their hands, and even then it took the woman more than a

single restart to create the potion. They had to give her the research notes she had made herself in

the previous restart and make something up to explain how they had them.

In the end they did get a recipe of turning dead grey hunters into powerful potions of mana

perception, but the issues involved had finally convinced Zorian to start learning how to make

transformation potions himself. He was still a rank beginner in the field, but even the little he knew

was useful. Eagle-eye potions were surprisingly easy to make, and the visual acuity they gave was

amazing.

“Yes, exactly,” the simulacrum said, approaching the group and startling Zach.

“You’re still here?” Zach asked. “Oh, right, Zorian did say the spider ignored you entirely.”

“Yeah, the grey hunter had absolutely no interest in me whatsoever. I guess it could tell I’m a

simulacrum. Its senses are really something.”

“It’s something alright,” Zach said. “Zorian, are you sure that thing isn’t intelligent?”

“Yes,” Zorian said. “I can’t affect its mind, but my mind sense works on it just fine and I can judge its

sapience. It’s dumber than a troll.”

“But it’s still about as smart as a crow or a boar,” the simulacrum protested against his creator. “It’s

got animal cunning. Do you remember how Zach dragged us into that bar in Knyazov Dveri and then

started a drunken conversation with that group of hunters?”

“Ugh, how could I forget?” Zorian said.

“You know, Zorian, watching you talk to yourself like that is pretty damn surreal,” Zach pointed out.

Neither the simulacrum nor the original acknowledged him in any way.

“Anyway,” continued the simulacrum. “At one point the hunters spoke about being hired to stop wild

boars from destroying the crops around the city and complained about how quickly the wild boars

learned to recognize and avoid traps. They said the boars even learned how to spot magical setups,

despite not having any magic perception as far as anyone knew.”

“Yes, but those are learned skills,” Zorian said, frowning. “The boars have to be constantly exposed

to traps to learn how to deal with them. The grey hunter didn’t have any chance to learn like that.”

“How do you know that?” the simulacrum countered. “It’s Silverlake who sent us to this place,

remember? Logically, this means she tried to retrieve the eggs herself and failed. I rather doubt she

tried to fight the grey hunter head on, so…”

“She used traps,” Zorian said, finally reaching the same conclusion the simulacrum had. “She used

all sorts of traps, and all she did was teach it how to recognize and avoid them.”

Zorian looked absolutely outraged at the fact Silverlake had basically trained the grey hunter on how

to respond to human attackers and never even bothered to tell them about it, but Zach just laughed

lightly.

“Deceptive mission givers, how nostalgic,” he said. “I remember the first time I got screwed over by

one, I was even more incensed than Zorian here. That aside, Zorian, I’m amused that your

simulacrum figured it out before you yourself did. How does that work?”

“Differing perspectives,” the simulacrum said with a light shrug.

“We diverged a few measly hours ago,” Zorian said dismissively. “Just how different could our

perspectives be?”

The simulacrum frowned, a little annoyed at the response. He didn’t answer with words. Instead he

forced a connection to Zorian’s mind and blasted him with a few choice memories. The nerve-

wracking wait before the platform’s descent. The terrifying sight of the grey hunter jumping out of the

cave and seemingly towards him. The feeling of frustration and powerlessness as he watched the

battle without being able to meaningfully contribute anything. Zorian gasped and took a step back,

caught off-guard by this sudden pseudo-attack, and gave him a shocked look.

“Very different,” the simulacrum said, and then deliberately collapsed his own ectoplasmic body and

dissolved into smoke.

His job was done, anyway.

- break -

It was a beautiful sunny day, and Zorian was standing on an abandoned field, far from anything

dangerous or important. He wasn’t alone. Standing around him was a group of familiar people: Zach,

Taiven, Imaya, Kirielle, Kana and Kael. They were all gathered around a stone table that Zorian had

created out of the nearby ground, watching the potion bottles lined up in the center of it. Each had a

slightly different reaction.

Zach looked mildly interested but otherwise calm and collected. Taiven had a distant, thoughtful

expression, seemingly consumed in her own thoughts and barely even conscious of her

surroundings. Imaya seemed torn between quiet excitement and apprehension, occasionally

glancing at Kirielle and Kana with a small frown. She probably thought they were too young to be

here. Considering the unhappy, sour look that Kael was giving Zorian, he probably agreed with that

conclusion. Zorian was unrepentant, though – if Kael didn’t want Kana here, he could have just

refused to bring her along. It wasn’t Zorian’s fault that Kael was too weak-willed to resist his

daughter’s whining and relented to her requests in the end.

As for Kirielle, well… she was practically vibrating on her feet from excitement, staring at the potion

bottle like she wanted to swallow it with her eyes. A bit comical, but Zorian could understand.

It wasn’t every day that you got a chance to turn into a bird and fly.

“Alright,” Zorian finally said. “I’m giving you all one last chance to back out.”

Besides Kirielle’s loud ‘no’, he received no response. He assumed that meant none of them were

stepping out at the last moment, but just to be sure he gave Kael a curious look, since he seemed to

be the one most against this.

Kana, whom Kael was currently holding in one hand, noticed the look and gave her father a quiet

whine, as if warning him to not even think about sending her away. Kael responded with an amused

snort and a casual tap against her forehead.

“I’m going to go through with it, against my better judgement,” Kael said, looking Zorian straight in

the eye. “I guess I should congratulate you – it’s been a while since Kana so obviously wanted

something. Now hurry up and explain things before I change my mind.”

“Fine,” Zorian shrugged. “I’ll keep it brief. There are six transformation potions here, all identical.

Drink it and you will be transformed into a peregrine falcon.”

“And then we can fly?” Kirielle asked excitedly.

“Of course,” Zorian said. “What would be the point of transforming into a bird if you can’t fly? Though

it might take a while before you can control your new body correctly, so don’t be surprised if your

initial attempts turn poorly.”

“What if someone falls from the sky for some reason?” Imaya asked. “Or if something tries to eat

us?”

“That’s why there are six potions instead of seven,” Zach noted. “I’ll remain untransformed and step

in if someone messes up. As for something trying to eat you… well, it shouldn’t happen. But if it

does, Zorian will be flying beside you and give them hell. There is nothing in the area that can

survive against him.”

Mostly because of his psychic powers. For normal mages, transforming into a non-humanoid form

was quite risky, as they would lose access to all structured spells. Zorian’s mental powers were just

as usable as a falcon as they were when he was human, so he was not nearly as defenseless.

“Okay. It’s comforting to know you’ve put some thought into this and that it isn’t something you’re

doing on a whim,” Imaya said. “But isn’t this horribly expensive? Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to try

being a falcon as much as the others, but… it just seems so wasteful to spend all these potions for

what is essentially playing around.”

Ah, yes – Imaya was the only adult here that hadn’t been informed about the time loop. One of these

days he was going to tell her the truth just to see how she reacted.

He spent a few seconds trying to put together a convincing response in his head, but before he

could vocalize it Taiven already butted in to explain instead.

“Don’t worry about that,” Taiven sighed. “It’s secret so I can’t tell you the details, but the cost of these

potions is so small for these two as to be functionally irrelevant.”

A few more clarifications later and the potions were distributed to everyone present except Zach.

Originally Zorian intended to drink his potion first to reassure the others that it worked correctly, but

apparently Kirielle didn’t need convincing and immediately drank hers when Zorian handed a bottle

to her. She transformed without any issues and the rest of them were treated to a sight of a brand

new female falcon flailing around on the grass for a good minute or so. She had attempted to take

flight immediately and found that it was not nearly as easy as one might think.

After that the rest of them drank the potion and transformed as well.

The next several hours were kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, nobody ended up getting hurt. On

the other hand, it turned out that Zorian had vastly underestimated how difficult it was to control a

completely alien body for most people. He had thought that his initial attempts at being a bird were

bad, but he was like a born genius compared to what his current pupils displayed. After some

thoughts, he came to the conclusion that this was probably another thing that benefited from him

being ‘Open’, as aranea would call it. The entire point of his psychic ability was that it gave him

greater awareness of his own mind and allowed him to process mental information from completely

foreign sources – that was why he was able to contact and read other people’s minds so easily, why

divinations that dumped information straight into the mind of the caster worked better for him, and

probably why he could handle being transformed into a completely foreign body far better than, say,

Imaya or Kael.

He suddenly understood a lot better why transformation magic was so relatively niche, and why

shifters were still envied by those who wished to take on the forms of other creatures. Learning how

to control a different body than the one you are used to was hard for Zorian, and it was apparently

even harder for other people. Anyone who wanted to benefit from transformation magic couldn’t do it

on a whim – they had to practice with their new form a lot before they could use it in any serious

manner.

Still, by the time the potion wore off, everyone had managed to take flight at least once. This was

mostly because Zorian was present, though – he used his telepathy to directly show people how a

falcon is supposed to move, sometimes even puppeteering their movements for a few seconds to

demonstrate what they were doing wrong. If they had been trying this alone, chances are they would

have required at least three or four sessions to get it right. And it was entirely possible they would

have ended up hurting themselves in the process.

The common consensus at the end was that being a falcon and flying through the air under their

own power was amazing and that maybe they should do it again some time. Kirielle also excitedly

floated the idea of turning into a dragon next time.

He probably spooked Imaya and Kael something fierce when he didn’t immediately veto the idea.

- break -

“What are you doing?”

Zorian stopped drawing the bowl of fruit in front of him to give Kirielle a strange look.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Zorian asked. “I’m drawing things.”

Zorian didn’t really know why he was doing it, to be honest. He didn’t think himself an artist, but he

felt like trying a new hobby since his old one of reading fiction was starting to get a little stale. There

were only so many good stories out there and he had read just about everything that interested him

at least twice by now.

He would probably get bored of drawing eventually, but he had only been doing this for the past

three restarts and for now he found it kind of relaxing.

“Since when do you draw?” she asked, nosily sticking her head over him to study his work. “Is this

related to that mysterious artist of yours?”

For a moment, he was confused what she was talking about before he remembered that was how he

had explained those old drawings of hers he had given her at the beginning of the restart. He had

been steadily compiling her work over the past several restarts, giving her the updated collection in

every restart. Since she disliked drawing things that already existed among the drawings given to

her by Zorian, this forced her to continually pick new things to draw every time.

Much like his decision to start drawing, this effort was motivated purely on the ground that he found

the result kind of amusing.

It was a bit wasteful in terms of mental space, but that was no longer the issue it once was. Ever

since he opened the Matriarch’s memory packet, he had plenty of space for things like this. In

addition, he had recently developed a better, more efficient method of storing notebooks than his

original improvised setup. He no longer recorded the entire structure of a notebook, opting to just

memorize the text and the diagrams inscribed within. A seemingly simple idea, but one that had

taken him months of tinkering to get right.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” said Zorian. After all, it was unlikely it would occur to him to start drawing if it

were not for Kirielle.

“Is she a girl?” Kirielle asked conspiratorially.

Zorian’s mouth twitched in amusement.

“Yes,” he said with a bashful cough. “As a matter of fact, she is.”

Kirielle grinned impishly, looking very pleased with herself for figuring it out.

“I knew it!” she crowed. “What’s her name? Do I know her? When can I meet her? Oh and what

about…”

It took Zorian at least a half an hour to get her to leave him alone, and somehow he had managed

not to laugh at her face throughout the whole thing. Sometimes he really surprised himself.

- break -

Zorian turned the solid iron sphere in his hands, staring at it thoughtfully. He would undoubtedly look

weird and maybe kind of crazy to any passerby that might be looking at him, since the sphere was

totally invisible to the naked eye. Fortunately for him, the only other person inside the room was the

very person who had given him that sphere so he could focus on the object of his study without

being distracted by the mutterings of random strangers.

The sphere in his hands was a complex, multi-layered thing surrounded by a dense cloud of different

wards stacked upon each other. The jigsaw-like arrangement of metal plates that made up its

physical structure was liberally peppered with both mechanical triggers and glyph clusters that would

destroy the fragile core buried in the heart of the sphere if he tried to open it incorrectly. He was

supposed to retrieve said core whole and intact, so that was obviously an unacceptable outcome. He

had to navigate the virtual maze of stacked wards and then carefully dismantle the sphere to retrieve

the core hidden within… and he had to do it without being able to see what he was working with,

since the invisibility field was tied to the very core he was supposed to retrieve and couldn’t be

deactivated until he got access to it.

Oh well, time to get to work.

The sphere’s invisibility was a pain, but it didn’t leave Zorian stumped. His magic perception had

been steadily advancing ever since Xvim had introduced him to the skill, and recently he had

undergone several giant leaps forwards in that regard. Partially this was due to the augmentation

potions made from the grey hunter’s corpse, and partially it was because he and Zach had been

throwing obscene amounts of money at various experts so they would teach them their skills.

He focused his senses on the sphere, trying to make sense of it. After about ten minutes of passive

observation he was confident enough to move on to more active methods. He carefully analyzed the

contraption with a multitude of divinations, some general and some incredibly focused and specific.

Slowly he bypassed or neutralized the outer wards so he could start dismantling the physical

structure of the sphere…

It took him more than two hours of challenging work, but he was successful in the end. He held a

bright red crystal in his hand and handed it to the middle-aged bearded man that had been watching

him as he worked.

“Excellent! Excellent!” the man said happily. “That was truly impressive. You’re even better than your

brother was at your age.”

Zorian smiled at the compliment, not saying anything. His outrage at being constantly compared to

Daimen had cooled down considerably over the years, but he didn’t trust himself not to sound bitter if

he tried to respond with words. He would just nod and quietly take advantage of the fact that this

man had taught his brother and looked at him favorably because of it.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t use a divination compass while you worked,” the man said,

leaning back in his chair. “Do you not need it?”

“No,” Zorian said honestly. “I just dump all the information the spells give me directly into my head.

I’m innately talented at interpreting that, so there is no need to bother with a divination compass.

Besides, I find that most physical tools discard a lot of important information given by the divination,

simply because they have no way of displaying it.”

“Ha! Of course they do, that’s why ward breakers like us pay huge sums for ever more sophisticated

divination compasses. In my estimation, you are already at the level where generic, store-bought

crap can’t satisfy your needs. You’d have to contact a mana forge and buy a custom built one. Of

course, if you’re really capable of comprehending the spells in your mind, maybe that’s just pointless

cost for you, I don’t know.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully. He was honest about not needing a divination compass, but he

supposed it wouldn’t hurt to check out the fancier, custom-built ones. Who knows, maybe there was

something he was missing with his current methods. It cost him nothing to buy a box of them and

then dismantle them to see how they worked.

A few hours later he left, carrying a list of divination compass makers and a letter of recommendation

without which those high-level experts wouldn’t even deign to speak with him. He soon arrived at the

local park where Zach was already waiting for him, sitting on the bench and feeding the pigeons with

bread like some old pensioner.

“Already done?” Zorian asked, mildly surprised. Zach was supposed to check out the combat magic

instructors in the city, which should have taken him a lot longer than this.

“None of them are worth our time,” Zach said, shaking his head and throwing another chunk of bread

at the small throng of pigeons in front of him. “Larsa is Falkrinea’s biggest and most important city.

You’d think they’d have a respectable selection of combat instructors but they’re nothing special. I

guess it’s true what they say about Falkrinea being the weakest of the Big Three in terms of military

might.”

Zorian nodded, accepting his judgement. Zach had spent decades in the time loop pursuing combat

magic excellence, so he knew what he was talking about. Even though Zorian required a completely

different selection of spells to be an effective combat mage than Zach did, he had faith that Zach

was keeping that fact in mind when checking these people out.

He plopped down on the bench next to Zach, marveling at the way the pigeons failed to react to his

sudden movement. If these pigeons ever landed in Cirin, they would be all caught before nightfall

and barbecued. Say what you want about Falkrinea’s lack of military might, they really were a

prosperous nation.

“What do you think about your newest instructor?” Zach asked. “Is he any good?”

“He’s good,” Zorian nodded slowly.

“But?” Zach asked, sensing there was more to it.

“He’s not teaching me everything he’s got,” Zorian sighed. “And I don’t think there is a way to

convince him to do so. He’s very impressed with me, but…”

“But he’ll only teach his best secrets to a formal apprentice, and even then you’d have to stay with

him for a year or more before he would consider it,” guessed Zach.

“Something like that,” Zorian nodded.

“That’s pretty much what Xvim said would happen,” Zach noted. “You never did go around mind

probing people on that list, did you?”

“No, I had been contacting them and trying to get them to teach me their skills ‘the proper way’. I had

been hoping it won’t be necessary,” Zorian said, frowning. “And in a way it really hadn’t been, if only

because up until now I had plenty of worthwhile things to learn even without resorting to that. But

now… I don’t know. If we want to get at the dagger in the royal treasury, we’re going to need to

become a lot better at ward breaking and the like. And these are not skills that people are willing to

trust a stranger with, especially not one they’ve met less than a month ago. These are highly

restricted, sometimes outright illegal skills. Most of the experts I’ve been talking to won’t even admit

they have them, much less agree to teach them to us.”

He hadn’t been met with total failure. Two of the experts on Xvim’s list actually proved willing to

teach him to the best of their ability – one because he happened to be in debt and was desperate for

large sums of money, and one because he was a mind mage who found Zorian’s innate mental

abilities endlessly fascinating. It was kind of interesting to compare structured mind magic to his own

abilities and see how they fare against each other, and though he was unlikely to ever use structured

mind magic himself, it did inspire him to take his mental abilities in new directions. However, just two

experts out of the large list Xvim had given him was…

Well, frustrating. Especially since it wasn’t just a moral issue – it was so much more useful to learn

from people when they were honestly trying to teach you something. Because of the need to know

which are the right questions to ask and a lack of back and forth between the teacher and the

student, mind magic interrogations were far inferior to having a willing teacher. If Zorian had to

memory probe Xvim every time he wanted something from him, for instance, the benefits would be

but a fraction of what he got out of the man through his current methods. Well, unless Xvim was

secretly hiding something of crucial importance from him, but Zorian kind of doubted that.

“What about targeting criminals?” Zach asked. “You’ve established links with Cyoria’s criminal

underground through the contact lists the aranea left behind, haven’t you?”

Yes, he certainly had. Interestingly, most of these were not ‘cloaked, shady men in dark alleys’ but

rather otherwise respected merchants and (somewhat less respected) mercenaries. He had used his

mind magic on these people a lot more freely than he had when interacting with legitimate experts

and instructors, but truthfully? There was a reason why most of these people used their abilities for

crime instead of opening a legitimate business. They just weren’t good enough. Most of them had a

neat trick or two, and Zorian copied those from them when he could, but in general they had nothing

that couldn’t be acquired easier elsewhere. Probably the most useful thing he obtained from these

people was a channel for acquiring illegal materials and the knowledge of how to hire unscrupulous

mercenaries without getting ripped off or ending up in jail. Useful things to be sure, but that wasn’t

what Zach was asking about.

“It wouldn’t work,” Zorian said simply, shaking his head. “They don’t have what we need.”

“Alright,” Zach said, not pressing the issue. “To be perfectly honest, I think we’re doing just fine as it

is. You shouldn’t feel pressured to do this if you don’t want to. We’ll manage somehow.”

Zorian said nothing to that, not really sure himself what the correct answer was. There was a part of

him that said he was being stupid by refusing to employ his mental abilities to their maximum extent,

but he suspected that once he started to casually assault people for no reason other than them

having things he wanted, it would be hard to take a step back. You are what you do. If he started

going down that path, it would change him, and not for the better. Sure, having those skills would

greatly increase the chances of him successfully escaping the time loop, but was there any point to

that if what came out at the end was a monster?

Zorian rose from his spot and walked away. Zach followed him, throwing the entire remains of his

bread to the pigeon throng as he left the bench. They left the park and its dangerously fearless

pigeons and continued their conversation on foot.

“Underwhelming results aside, this is a nice city,” Zach said. “Was there anything else you wanted to

do here?”

“Yes, actually,” Zorian said. “There is a famous golem maker here and a couple of spell formula

crafters for hire.”

“You really are determined to spend all of our money, aren’t you?” Zach asked rhetorically.

“Of course. It’s completely useless to leave it sitting there without use. It’s not like we can transfer it

between restarts,” Zorian said.

He actually wasn’t going to seek instructions from these people – he was going to hire them to do

work for him. He had been doing that for several restarts now, paying various spell formula experts

to design or improve blueprints for him. Then he took the finished designs and gave them to the

same people in the next restart in order to further refine them. Sometimes he also gave them to

different people, just to see what different takes they have on the problem.

He did the same with warding experts, golem makers and alchemists. All of those fields took a lot of

thinking and testing, but the finished designs were fairly compact and could be used by anyone,

making them really convenient to advance in this fashion. At some point he was probably going to hit

a point of diminishing returns with this, but that point was a long way off at the moment. Besides,

when that happened, he might be able to take the collected knowledge he gained this way and trade

it to people for their professional secrets. Magical knowledge and techniques could tempt some

people in a way that money never could.

The snide part of Zorian informed him that he was robbing these people just as surely as a memory

probe would have, only using more roundabout methods. Zorian told it to shut up and that it just

wasn’t the same.

- break -

Simulacrum number two was bored and the cause was easy to understand – he was attending

academy classes like a normal student. Zorian hadn’t been regularly attending classes for quite a

while now, even when trying to stay on the teachers’ good side, since doing that was a huge time

sink and provided him with no benefits at this point. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a choice in the

matter. The original had gotten it into his head that he should check how obvious a simulacrum’s

disguise was by having them interact with a bunch of people on a regular basis… which somehow

meant being sent back to school.

Okay, okay, so he actually knew what the logic behind that was. He had all of the original’s

memories, after all. The idea was that the academy was full of mages of all sorts, and his

classmates were at least passingly familiar with him, so if anyone could notice there was something

wrong with him, it would be them.

They didn’t notice anything wrong, of course. The simulacrum actually broke off from the script

entirely – he was supposed to stay inconspicuous but he decided to show off his future knowledge

as much as possible instead – and nobody raised a fuss. Unlike Zach, he was known to be a good,

diligent student. They probably thought he had studied ahead or something.

In any case, the mission was less one of nerve-wracking infiltration and more of an exercise in

resisting soul-crushing boredom. The only good thing about the situation was that he would only

have to tolerate this for one day – the original had been very zealous about dismissing his

simulacrums at the end of each day, so he wouldn’t have to be here tomorrow too.

Why couldn’t he have been like the simulacrum number one, who was mapping the local

underworld, or simulacrum number three, who was arranging a trade deal with one of the aranean

webs near Knyazov Dveri?

Well, the current class had finally ended during his internal whining, so he could-

“Wow, Zorian, you got every question on that unannounced test correctly! How did you do that? I

checked and some of those questions aren’t even in our textbook.”

Zorian turned around in his seat, looking at the girl speaking with him. It was Neolu. When he had

arrived to the academy, he had quickly realized that she considered him to be something of a friend,

even though he had no memory of ever really interacting with her before the time loop. How was that

possible? Well… he wasn’t the first simulacrum that was sent on this mission. And apparently one of

the previous simulacrums was similarly bored out of his skull here and decided to go off the script

and befriend her. And then never bothered to inform the original about it.

Simulacrum number two didn’t intend to inform the original either. The whole thing was harmless and

imagining the original’s reaction when he finally found out was kind of amusing.

He leaned forward a little in a conspiratorial manner and motioned for Neolu to come closer. She did,

and from the corner of his eyes he also saw Akoja leaned in a little so she could eavesdrop on them

better.

“I have a time machine,” he whispered to her solemnly. “And I’m using it to cheat at school.”

He heard Akoja snort softly in the background. Neolu, though, gave him a weird, considering look.

“Really?” she asked suspiciously, like he had just told her something unlikely but still entirely

possible.

That… was not the response the simulacrum had expected. He stared at her face for a second, at a

loss about how to answer that. Hmm… now that he thought about it, Neolu was a bit cute. She had a

pretty face and her naiveté could be kind of endearing, in small doses. He had looked down on her

in the past, thinking she was kind of dim and flighty, so he had never really thought about it much.

But seeing how he was going to live less than a day now, he found himself a lot more forgiving than

he would usually be.

“No, I was just joking with you. I don’t really have a time machine,” Zorian explained patiently.

“Pity. Having a time machine would be grand,” Neolu said, smiling. “Sometimes I really wish I could

go back in time and fix things before I mess up.”

“Don’t we all,” Zorian shrugged. Too bad the time loop didn’t work like that. After a bit of thought he

tore off a sheet of paper from his notebook and wrote down the questions for tomorrow’s spell

formula test and handed it to Neolu.

The moment she realized what she was looking at, her eyes widened comically.

“Is this–” she began, only for Zorian to cut her off.

“Hush. I never handed you anything, okay? See you tomorrow, I guess.”

Akoja gave him a very disapproving look afterwards. Apparently she figured out the general nature of

what he did from the clues in front of her and she didn’t like it. Her disapproval died down

considerably when he handed her a copy of the questions as well, though she did mumble

something about cheating being wrong.

The simulacrum rolled his eyes at the statement and went back to Imaya’s place to report to the

original.

Somehow, he didn’t think that would actually stop her from making use of the information tomorrow.

- break -

Eight restarts had passed since the time Zach and Zorian had first tried to break into Eldemar’s royal

treasury. Their priorities during this time consisted of investigating the invasion forces, looking for

possible signs of Red Robe, trying to track down the rest of the missing Key pieces and figuring out

some way to leave the time loop. Of course, since actually retrieving even the known pieces of the

Key was impossible with their current skills, and they had no idea what kind of abilities they would

need to retrieve the rest, a large portion of their efforts was dedicated to elevating their magical

expertise in various ways.

Zach did his best to focus on strengthening his personal soul awareness and mental defenses, but

both of those skills were very tedious to improve and Zach was pretty impatient by nature. He often

spent a lot of time trying to figure out some way to improve his combat magic, even though he was

already very good at that and any improvements tended to be very marginal.

As for Zorian, he did a little bit of everything, from pursuing more mind magic lessons from the

aranea (though he had picked all low-hanging fruit in that regard and was starting to hit the point of

diminishing returns) to working on his golems and magic skill. However, the bulk of his effort

centered around mastering dimensionalism and time magic as much as possible, in the hopes that

doing so would give him some clue as to how they could escape the time loop. Thus far, he didn’t

have any solid leads in regards to such an escape route, but he did learn how to open dimensional

gates and haste himself, so at least he accomplished something.

Currently, Zach and Zorian were inside a Black Room – but not the same Black Room as the one in

Cyoria. This was the result of a considerable effort to find other Black Rooms across Altazia, since

making use of the one in Cyoria twice remained as impractical as ever. So far they had managed to

find two more – one in Sulamnon and the other in Cwenjar, a small Splinter State on the border of

Eldemar. Unfortunately, these were a lot less impressive than the one Eldemar had built. The

Sulamnese one could only be activated for twelve days, while the Cwenjari one could only last for

five. But still, 17 days was 17 days, and Zach and Zorian had been dutifully making use of them

anyway.

It might actually be a good thing that these Black Rooms were less effective than the Cyorian one,

since suffering through three months of isolation in every restart would probably be really unhealthy

for their psyche.

Especially considering Zach was already going crazy, even though they were currently in the

Cwenjari Black Room and there was only one day left before they could leave.

“Damn it!” Zach swore, the complicated geometric shape above his hand winking out as he lost

control of it. Lately he had been trying out some very exotic shaping exercises in another bid for

improving his combat magic, but evidently it wasn’t going as well as he hoped. “Okay, I’ve had

enough of this! Done! I’m done!”

He shouted this overdramatically to the sky (well, to the ceiling, since they were in-doors) while

keeping his hands raised in the air. Somehow, Zorian was getting the idea that there was more to

this than his momentary failure to figure out a random shaping exercise.

“You’re still angry about what happened with Alanic and his soul awareness training, aren’t you?” he

surmised.

Zach responded by swearing up a storm, which Zorian took as confirmation that he was correct.

It happened in the previous restart. Alanic had finally judged Zach to have reached a point in his soul

awareness where he could move on to the more dangerous version of soul training that Zorian had

undergone. Zach was very excited and confident, but the moment Alanic touched Zach and tried to

separate his soul from his body, Zorian’s marker activated and the restart immediately ended.

The marker woven through their souls was a curious thing. It was hard to figure out for the same

reason that memory probes were hard – you had to pretty much already know what you were

looking for before you could find it. You couldn’t just browse through it for interesting information like

you would a book and the like. You had to know which was the right question to ask.

Now armed with the knowledge of what was possible, courtesy of what he had seen his own marker

do in that terminated restart, Zorian had no problems leveraging his hard-won soul awareness into

figuring out what happened.

The marker, as it turned out, had a contingency that terminated the current restart if ‘significant

tampering’ of the controller’s mind or soul is detected. It was unclear what exactly would qualify as

‘significant tampering’, but apparently even wrenching a soul out of the Controller’s body was

enough to trigger it.

In Zorian’s marker, this function was non-functional, which was why he could go through Alanic’s

soul training without any issues. Zach’s marker, however, was not defective in this manner. It

detected Alanic’s training as an attack upon the Controller and reacted accordingly.

This information helped answer a few questions that Zorian had been wondering about for quite

some time. Such as why Red Robe had done such relatively minor damage to Zach’s memories –

he probably couldn’t have done more than he did. In fact, the real surprise was that he had managed

to do as much as he had without triggering the restart. If Zorian was reading his own defective

marker correctly, the contingency in question was quite trigger happy – whoever made it was a big

believer in the ‘better safe than sorry’ school of philosophy when it came to the safety of the

Controller. Red Robe must have spent multiple restarts figuring out a way to get past it to the extent

that he did.

This would also explain why Zach had been so relatively unconcerned in the past about having his

soul or mind targeted. He had probably been hit by spells like that plenty of times, but that just ended

his current restart prematurely. With that in mind, his attitude might not have been as foolish as

Zorian had thought it was.

Of course, no defense was unbeatable in the end. Liches, for instance, commonly possessed a very

similar contingency that wrenched their soul back to their phylactery when exposed to things like

hostile soul magic. Which was how Quatach-Ichl, as someone who had probably fought quite a few

rival liches, instantly knew how to bypass it when Zach foolishly told him he would survive bodily

destruction. As for how Red Robe bypassed its protection to mess with Zach’s mind, Zorian wasn’t

quite sure…

…but he had a suspicion it was related to Red Robe’s use of non-structured mind magic. He

distinctly remembered that Red Robe had been using non-structured mind magic on both him and

Zach, despite being fairly bad at it. Which was kind of foolish of him at the face of it, since structured

mind magic would have probably served a non-psychic like him a lot better in most regards.

However, if the marker’s contingency was aimed primarily at countering structured magic, and non-

structured magic bypassed it to some extent, his choice of attack mode made perfect sense.

At first, the idea that the marker’s maker didn’t take non-structured magic fully into account when

designing the contingencies sounded like an unbelievable oversight to Zorian. However, the more he

thought about it, the more sense it made. Non-structured magic was a lot rarer in the past, both due

to the more primitive shaping instruction at that time and because magical bloodlines used to be

smaller and less sophisticated. The marker, and even the time loop itself, may have been built with a

set of assumptions that were simply not valid today as they once had been. And whoever had

activated the Sovereign Gate either couldn’t or wouldn’t update it to take modern circumstances into

account.

“…all that time I wasted on those exercises!” Zach shouted, his rant finally dying down as his anger

ran out of steam.

“It’s not that bad,” Zorian assured him. “Yes, you lost out a fair bit by not being able to go through the

same training I did, but you still managed to achieve some elementary soul awareness, and that’s

not nothing. It will allow you to cast defensive spells on your soul, at the very least. Which is a must if

we ever want to fight Quatach-Ichl and take his crown. So you didn’t waste anything. The only real

loss is that we lost an entire restart to that.”

Zach winced. “Yeah, in retrospect, we really shouldn’t have tried that at the very beginning of the

restart.”

“Hindsight is always perfect,” Zorian shrugged. “It’s just one restart and we learned very valuable

information from it. We’ll manage.”

Zach sighed and plopped down on the floor again with a heavy grunt. He was quiet for a moment.

“It just seems like we haven’t accomplished all that much in these past seven months or so, you

know?” he finally said. “I mean, we investigated all the high ranking members of the cult and none of

them are obviously Red Robe. We also can’t locate Veyers at all – it’s like he just vanished into thin

air. We have yet to successfully extract the damn dagger from the royal treasury and we can’t even

find the rest of the Key pieces …”

“Okay, that last one isn’t really true,” Zorian said, interrupting him. “We may not know their exact

location, but we do know where to look for them.”

Their search for the missing pieces of the key had been long and expensive. Such a project would

have been impossible to finish in any reasonable amount of time by just two of them working alone.

So they didn’t even try. They outsourced their work to numerous information brokers, both legal and

criminal, paying huge sums to have them and their agents check up on rumors and stories of Ikosian

inheritance floating around. They hired museums and historians to comb through historical records

in search of any scrap of information related to the objects. As for themselves, they made

themselves useful by breaking into government records of Eldemar, Sulamnon, Falkrinea and other

Splinter States. The buildings that held those records were not nearly as well defended as the royal

treasury, and the Splinter States had made their own attempts to locate these important historical

objects.

Thankfully, those efforts were not without results.

“Knowing that one of the pieces is in the deepest part of the Xlotic desert, that another had been lost

gods know where in the jungles of Koth and that the last one was stolen by some asshole who took

it with him to Blantyrre is not very helpful,” Zach grouched. “All it tells us is that searching for the rest

of the Key on Altazia is probably pointless. And how are we supposed to get to these places to

search for the missing pieces, anyway? Just getting to Koth would take us almost an entire restart,

nevermind actually searching for it. If that information is true, we’re kind of screwed, Zorian.”

“Maybe,” Zorian agreed. “But you see, I have a plan…”

Chapter 064

Distance

Eldemar and Koth were very far from one another. The exact distance was hard to pin down, since

the name ‘Koth’ covered a pretty big area on the southern continent, but Zorian estimated it to be

around 7000 kilometers minimum. Worse, this was a straight line distance, so the actual journey

would be even longer. It was not impossible to make that journey in the span of a month, but just

reaching the place was not enough for Zach and Zorian – they needed to reach it with plenty of time

to spare, or else they would have no time to search for the piece of the Key that was supposedly lost

there. Additionally, if they spent most of their time in transit to Koth, they could not make use of the

Black Rooms scattered across Altazia. Thus, by committing themselves to such a journey, they

effectively lost more than a single month of time.

There were two main methods of traveling from Eldemar to Koth. The simplest, as well as the

cheapest method was to board a ship at the city of Luja and make your way to Koth by sea. Even

the cheaper ships would get you there within a month, and the pricier vessel may make the journey

in as little as 20 days! Well, assuming the ship didn’t get sunk by a tiger-striped nautilus or

something along the way. But he heard those were pretty much exterminated along major shipping

routes, along with sea hydras, razor sharks and flying barracudas, so probably not. In any case, this

was the method Zorian’s parents were using to get to Koth, as they were not in that much of a hurry

and didn’t want to spend more money than they needed to.

The second main method was utilizing the existing network of teleport platforms that connected most

major settlements on Altazia and Miasina. It was pricier than ship travel, but that was not an issue for

Zach and Zorian. A bigger problem was that while this method was faster than ship travel… it

actually wasn’t that much faster. Using publicly available information, Zorian calculated that it would

take them 15 days to reach Koth by using the teleport platform network, and that was under ideal

conditions. The issue was that the teleport platform network worked on a strict schedule that couldn’t

be sped up – the network spanned over numerous different countries, after all, and none of them

were willing to let mass teleport traffic go in and out of the country with no control or supervision.

Each platform had security checks and border control that travelers had to go through, and that took

time. A lot of time, according to Zach – he had already tried to use the platforms as a method of

reaching Koth once, purely on a whim, and it actually took him most of the month to reach his

destination. Would Zorian be able to do better? Doubtful. Even if Zorian offered to pay extra, the

teleport operators would refuse to make an off-schedule platform activation just for his sake – who

would cause an international incident just for some extra cash? And even if Zorian went wild with his

mind magic and convinced them to make an exception for him and Zach, the destination platform

security would not be inclined to play along. Depending on the destination, they might even shoot

him on sight – there had been cases where teleport platforms were used for raids and surprise

attacks, and some places were very trigger happy about un-announced teleports.

All in all, Zorian didn’t think he could optimize the teleport platform to any significant extent. They

were a very fast and convenient method if one was traveling to a destination that was a couple of

jumps away, but they just weren’t designed to get people over vast distances as fast as they were

willing to pay. If anything, the speed of transit was deliberately throttled to more manageable levels,

so that the local authorities could exercise some measure of control over it.

Unfortunately, there were no other routine methods for crossing such large distances. Not many

absurdly rich people needed to get from Eldemar to Koth as fast as humanly possible in any given

year, so no widespread service provided it.

That left unconventional methods. Zorian had considered some wild ones, such as stealing one of

the few existing airships to make the journey or transforming into a migratory bird and flying there,

but ultimately dismissed them as too fanciful to really work. Besides, methods like that didn’t solve

the problem of losing access to Altazia’s Black Rooms, and would require them to dedicate at least

several restarts in pursuit of exotic skills that were unlikely to be useful for anything else. Being able

to pilot an airship was good for bragging rights and not much else, unless you were actually an

airship pilot by trade.

Eventually, his thoughts turned to the gate spell and his recent practice of making heavy use of

simulacrums. Probably because that was what he had been working on recently. By themselves,

neither of the two spells was the solution to his problem… but combined together, they could be.

The simulacrum had no range limit as far as Zorian was aware – it had to be created next to the

caster, but it could then roam as far away from the original as it wanted. The gate spell, on the other

hand, was largely limited by its rather miserable range… unless there were people on both ends of

the gate working in tandem to stabilize it. If there were people casting the spell on both ends of the

gate, then it also didn’t have a known range limit. In practice, the gate spell was rarely utilized in this

way, both because people capable of casting the gate spell were as rare as hen’s teeth and because

actually coordinating two such people to synchronize their casting over large distances was hard. It

was often quicker and more practical to simply chain teleports from place to place than to go through

such a hassle.

With the simulacrum spell, Zorian didn’t have to worry about finding another person capable of

casting the spell. He could effectively be two or more people at the same time. And while

coordinating the spell over continental distances was a bit of an issue, it was not insurmountable. In

the worst case, he could simply instruct his simulacrum to leave a trail of telepathic relays along its

path and maintain contact that way.

One nice thing about the idea was that while his simulacrum was traveling to Koth, he would be able

to stay in Eldemar and wouldn’t lose access to the Black Rooms in that particular restart. One not so

nice thing was that this would permanently tie down one of his simulacrums, leaving one less for him

to boss around. He could only maintain three simulacrums at most without his mana regeneration

going negative, so that was not an entirely irrelevant cost.

Additionally, that would require him to discard his previous rule about only allowing simulacrums to

exist for 24 hours. However, he didn’t really foresee much problems with that – his simulacrums had

been really well behaved, all things considered. His current simulacrums could be kind of cranky and

weird sometimes, but they were clearly him and had his best interests at heart. Still, maybe he

should start considering some kind of countermeasure in case one of his simulacrums went rogue

and tried to take over? But any countermeasure he designed his simulacrum would know about.

Argh…

In any case, that still left the question of how the simulacrum was going to reach Koth in a

reasonable amount of time. It was nice that Zorian wasn’t going to have to dedicate half a restart to

such a journey and lose access to the black rooms, but the fact remained they would only have 15 or

so days in each restart left to conduct a search for the Key. He needed something better than that.

That was why he decided to talk to the Silent Doorway Adepts. It could turn out to be a massive

waste of time, but if they really knew something about the operation of Bakora gates, that could be

precisely the solution he needed.

After all, why bother setting up a brand new gate network if one already existed, and was largely

unsupervised to boot?

Thus, Zach and Zorian were currently standing in front of the Silent Doorway Adept representative,

Refuge in Void. She was a skittish little thing, twitching and shuffling in place all the time, acting way

too nervous for a professional negotiator. Then again, how many humans interacted with aranea so

heavily they learned how to read their body cues? Maybe it was Zorian who was weird.

Surrounding them were eight other aranea, serving as guards. There were originally four of them,

but the Silent Doorway Adepts brought in another four once they realized what Zach and Zorian

were after.

The negotiations weren’t going too well.

“I am sorry, honored guests, but we really cannot help you with this,” the Silent Doorway Adept

representative said, using a vocalization spell to speak out loud instead of resorting to their usual

telepathy. She was either not very proficient in the spell or was trying to unnerve them with

amateurish psychological warfare, because her voice was weirdly resonant and distorted. “The

Bakora Gate in our possession is simply a treasured historical artifact. It has great sentimental value

to us, but we know of no method to actually make it work.”

Her middle legs twitched slightly, an obvious nervous tic that plagued her since the very beginning of

these talks.

“But please,” she added, trying her best to sound sincere, “if you find anything regarding the

activation of Bakora gates, contact us immediately. We are as interested in this matter as you are.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Zorian, clacking his tongue unhappily.

They had tried just about everything they could think of to secure the web’s cooperation on this –

they had offered confidential information on surrounding polities, offered rare materials and money,

offered knowledge of secret aranean techniques they had gotten from the other webs in various

restarts and they had offered an utterly ridiculous amount of crystalized mana for it. It was all for

naught – the Silent Doorway Adepts remained obstinate in feigning ignorance on the matter.

He exchanged a long look with Zach, who just shrugged in response. This meeting was largely

Zorian’s idea. Zach came to the meeting while under the effects of the mind blank spell and mostly

remained silent – a fact that surely wasn’t helping the Silent Doorway Adepts relax around them.

Still, that was the whole point – Zorian deliberately instructed Zach to do that, as an unspoken

intimidation attempt. He knew from his past dealings with the Silent Doorway Adepts that merely

being polite and generous wasn’t going to accomplish anything, so he brought Zach along to show

them he wasn’t someone they could dismiss out of hand. In a way, it worked – Zorian was sure the

web would have chased him off by now if he had come alone, but since there was a mind-blanked

mage standing next to him, looking all grim and imposing, they remained polite and treated him far

nicer than they did in the past.

It was true, what they say – negotiations tended to go better if you brought both gifts and an armed

entourage, as opposed to just gifts.

Unfortunately, their hosts seemed to be running out of patience, as Zorian spotted some of the

guards shifting their positions, as if preparing themselves for a surprise attack.

“Please don’t do that,” he said with a sigh. “You have no chance against us in an actual fight. I’m

sure you’ve noticed that my friend here is under a mind blank, and I assure you he’s as good as

you’d think. I am not that bad at fighting myself, if you’ll permit me to be a little immodest, so don’t

discount me as a threat either. You would only be walking into your death if you attack us. Don’t do

this to yourself.”

“If you are so confident in your combat prowess, why not just attack us and take what you want by

force?” Refuge in Void said. Perhaps it was just Zorian, but she sounded a little bitter to him. “Why

negotiate with us at all?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Zorian told her matter-of-factly. “We’re not brigands.”

“I see. So your friend here…?” she asked, leaning slightly towards Zach, who raised his eyebrow at

her curiously.

“It’s just a precaution,” Zorian said. “Unless you attack me, this meeting will not degenerate into

violence.”

Also, he was not at all sure he could figure out their secrets from reading their minds. The sort of

knowledge about the gate he wanted was likely held by a small selection of their experts and maybe

leaders, and they were liable to have protected it well. In the past, when Zach and Zorian raided

aranean webs, their elders had the annoying tendency to erase their own memories in regards to

important secrets, rather than let them fall into their hands. Since the two of them hadn’t been after

their closest secrets back then, this had been a minor matter back then. Now, though, it would be a

giant show stopper.

“In that case, I will be frank with you – we are not willing to divulge our secrets to you,” Refuge in

Void said. “You’re just wasting both of our time here.”

“At any price?” Zorian frowned.

“I’m afraid so. I honestly can’t think of anything you could offer us that would make us reveal our

closest mysteries to you.”

Well. This was… not unexpected. It was time to bring out his secret weapon, then.

“Let’s test this with one last offer, then,” Zorian said.

“Sure,” Refuge in Void said, projecting a mixture of relief and disinterest, as if she was just pleased

this was about to end.

“Me and Zach here are time travelers,” Zorian said. “And we can help you send messages from your

current selves to the Silent Doorway Adepts in the past.”

There was a short pause as the aranean representative froze for a second and then shook her

forward legs in a strange gesture.

“Well,” she said. “I have to say, this… this is the first time anyone has tried that argument. I find

myself curious… do you have any kind of proof for that statement?”

“Three days from now, you are going to send a team of three aranea to an old contact in Tozen to

pick up another shipment of crystalized mana,” said Zorian, causing the representative to freeze

again. “However, it will be a trap and two of them will never return.”

“That doesn’t-” Refuge in Void started saying.

“Two days after that,” continued Zorian in a louder voice, cutting her off, “you will finally track down

the Red Scrolls of Tmilicen, but your previous buyer will say he is no longer interested in them. He

will instead point you to Padina’s Magical Museum as a possible buyer. At the same time, you will

come into possession of a box of emberheart crystals…”

After Zorian made another ten or so predictions, Refuge in Void finally broke down and went to

speak with her elders. An hour later, he was handed over to someone higher in the chain of

command – specifically, Glittering River of Stars, who was some kind of vice-elder as far as he could

figure out. She was a lot less obstructive than Refuge in Void had been, but still not willing to talk to

him about Bakora gates.

“We will need some time to confirm these… predictions of yours. I’m sure you understand,” Glittering

River said apologetically. She really sounded apologetic, too! She was a much better actor than

Refuge in Void had been.

“I understand,” Zorian said, nodding slowly. “It’s fine. We didn’t really expect to get your cooperation

after one attempt, anyway.”

“But that’s okay,” Zach said with a sunny smile. “We have as many attempts to get this right as we

want to.”

To her credit, Glittering River did not shift or twitch uncomfortably, as Refuge in Void had been prone

to, but Zorian could tell she was uncomfortable anyway. They had explained to her the general

nature of the time loop they were in, but neglected to mention some important details – such as that

they were on a time limit or just how crucial Bakora gate information might be to them. Zorian wasn’t

sure how much the Silent Doorway Adepts really believed about their story, but they were clearly

spooked enough by the implications to humor him for a bit.

“Incidentally, if there is a way for me to prove my claims easier to your web in future restarts, I’d love

to hear it,” Zorian said.

“We will have to discuss things before I get back to you on that,” Glittering River said diplomatically.

After that, they were basically ejected out of the colony and told to come back in a week.

Considering that Zorian had been afraid they would laugh them straight out of the room the moment

they mentioned time travel, he considered this already a victory. So long as they didn’t reject the

idea out of hand, he was sure they could prove to them that the time loop was real. They may not

have literally infinite retries like they had implied to Glittering River, but what they did have should be

more than enough.

“We seem to have frightened them pretty badly there,” Zach commented on the way back to Cyoria.

“Especially when you started mentioning the deals you’ve made with other webs and how you intend

to repay them after you get out of the time loop. You’d think they’d be happy about their fellow webs

being rewarded, but apparently not.”

“The last time one of the aranean webs got massively superior to others, they swept over the entire

continent, conquering or supplanting every rival colony in the way,” Zorian pointed out. “They’ve got

every right to be worried.”

“Huh, I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Zach said thoughtfully. “I mean, you’ve already told me that, but

I just hadn’t considered how that would affect their attitudes. It’s good I left the negotiations mostly to

you, then. You really understand aranean psychology way better than I do.”

There was a short silence before Zach spoke again.

“So… do you really intend to just hand down knowledge to other webs like that?” he asked curiously.

“Of course,” Zorian nodded. “Not to every single web I interacted with, admittedly, but every web that

has been especially helpful to me is bound to get something for their trouble.”

“What about help of the human variety?” Zach asked. “Do they get any repayment?”

“That’s a bit more dangerous, since they are far more likely to track me down through my gifts than

the aranea. I want to pay people back for their help, but I don’t want to suffer just because I have a

sense of honor,” said Zorian.

“Yeah, some people are really shameless,” Zach agreed. “Give them a finger and they’ll try to bite off

the whole arm. And some might just be too curious for their own good.”

“Yeah,” Zorian nodded. “I intend to try and repay people anyway, but I’ll have to be a lot more careful

and selective about it.”

“Makes me feel a little guilty,” Zach admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever seriously considered paying

people back for things I got from them over the restarts. Invite me when you start finalizing those

plans, okay? I think I have a few people I should really reward somehow for all the good they’ve

done to me.”

“Sure,” Zorian nodded.

“So,” Zach continued. “The Silent Doorway Adepts. Do you think their leadership will believe us in

the end?”

“Maybe. But even if they do, it’s no guarantee that they’ll agree to a trade,” Zorian said, shaking his

head sadly. “If they’re paranoid enough, any deal with us might seem like shooting themselves in the

foot. They have no way to make sure we’re actually going to keep our end of the bargain once we’re

outside the time loop. Who’s to say we won’t just pump them for every secret they have and then

unceremoniously discard them? You know, like the Ghost Serpent thought we would do to it?”

Zach made a sour face. He didn’t like to be reminded of the snake spirit – he had been severely

insulted by its accusations, taking them much more personally than Zorian himself did.

“In any case,” Zorian continued, “Even if these negotiations fail, it’s not the end of the world. There is

at least one other group that seems to have insight into how Bakora gates work – there is a fully

functional gate mechanism beneath Cyoria, courtesy of the invaders, and it’s supposed to be heavily

inspired by Bakora gates.”

“None of the Ibasans know how that thing works,” pointed out Zach. “I bet only Quatach-Ichl really

does. So that doesn’t really help us much.”

“Yeah, probably,” Zorian agreed. He had delved into the minds of enough high-ranking invaders to

realize that the gates probably weren’t made by any of them. Either Quatach-Ichl was the only one

who knew the secrets of their construction or the other builders weren’t allowed to be part of the

invasion force. It would make sense if it were so – the gates were one huge advantage for the

Ibasans, and they definitely didn’t want that secret to fall into the hands of Eldemar’s mages. “But I

wasn’t thinking of finding someone to memory probe for the information. I was thinking of simply

taking over the gate site and analyzing the gate scaffolding itself.”

Zach raised an eyebrow at him.

“I though you said that would take months,” he asked curiously. “Maybe years. What changed?”

“I realized I was being kind of an idiot,” Zorian said. “Sure, it would take a long time if I tried to figure

it out all alone… but why do that? Why not bring a small army of experts down there and have us all

tackle it together?”

Zach hummed thoughtfully.

“It would have to be done very, very carefully, unless we want Quatach-Ichl to come crashing to the

party,” he said. “But then again, that’s true for anything involving the invasion, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s

worth a try. Let’s do it.”

“We’ll wait for the day of the invasion,” Zorian said hurriedly. He could see Zach was getting fired up

and he would rather not go get himself killed in the middle of the restart due to his impatience. “The

security of the gate is laughable if you time things right.”

“Oh, right, you did mention that,” Zach said, deflating a little. “Man, I feel so angry at myself for never

figuring that out before you told me. I never did manage to step through the gate myself, you know?

Even when I was fast enough in carving my way through the defenders to avoid Quatach-Ichl

showing up to get rid of me, the defenders always collapsed the gate before I reached it.”

“I still can’t believe you just made a direct, frontal assault on the Ibasan base instead of trying to

infiltrate it,” Zorian said. “Why the hell did you think that would work?”

“I’m not good at infiltration,” Zach said with an unrepentant shrug. “Besides, it almost did work. It’s

not stupid if it works, right?”

They spent the rest of the journey home arguing about whether or not there is any difference

between ‘almost worked’ and ‘ultimately failed’.

- break -

“What do you mean, I have a date with Akoja?” Zorian asked his simulacrum incredulously.

“Just what I said,” the simulacrum said, unconcerned with his agitation. “She asked me to meet her

in that little tea house two blocks from the academy and I accepted.”

Zorian felt the urge to throw a lightning bolt at his damn simulacrum, but he knew that wouldn’t

actually help him feel any better. If anything, it would just complicate things further by denying him

much needed answers as to how could this happen!?

“You can’t just decide things like this on your own!” Zorian hissed to his simulacrum in frustration.

The simulacrum arched his eyebrow at him.

“Well it’s true,” Zorian insisted. “I know you’re my simulacrum and I told you to do whatever, but you

should have contacted me for opinion before agreeing to something like this.”

“Are you saying that if you had been in my place, you would have blown her off when she asked to

meet?” his simulacrum asked with a knowing smile.

Zorian frowned. If this were before the time loop? Yeah, definitely. Now? No, not a chance. He

wasn’t interested in dating Akoja – he didn’t think their personalities meshed well – but he’d give her

a chance at least.

He hated that gods-damned smirk that was on his simulacrum’s face right now, but he was right that

Zorian would have likely made the same decision in his place.

“This is just-” Zorian started, before stopping himself with a sigh. “When?”

“Two days from now,” the simulacrum said.

“How the hell did this happen?” Zorian asked. “I knew Akoja was kind of crushing on me, but she

never tried anything until now. What changed? What did you do?”

“Actually she did set up a meeting with you once, remember?” his simulacrum said. “Only she

chickened out at the end and nothing came of it. But I doubt it’s going to be like that this time, since

she set up an actual date for it and all. Anyway, I didn’t do anything, it’s your previous simulacrums

that did.”

“What do you mean?” Zorian frowned. He’d been doing a lot of frowning ever since this conversation

started.

“Apparently they’ve been pretty active among our classmates without telling you. They’re hanging

out with all sorts of people and then leaving out that detail when making their final reports. In

particular, they’ve been interacting with Akoja heavily enough that she apparently felt confident

enough to ask me out.”

Before dismissing a simulacrum, Zorian always made sure to ask it for a memory packet of

everything important that had occurred to it during its short life. This was usually accompanied by a

verbal report, since Zorian found it useful to chat with his simulacrums from time to time to see how

they’re faring. This did mean he had to rely on the simulacrums being able to effectively summarize

their existence for him, but there was no real alternative. If he asked the simulacrums for memories

of their entire existence, he would never be able to digest the memory packets in any reasonable

amount of time. Interpreting 24 hours of memories, no matter how mundane, would take him at least

a couple of hours… and he usually had more than one simulacrum active at the time. He could only

rely on his simulacrums to pick what they felt was important and pass it on.

“Why would they do that?” Zorian asked.

“No idea. But if I were to guess… because it’s kind of funny to imagine your reaction when you finally

find out,” his simulacrum said, grinning. “I’m certainly amused at your predicament.”

“My predicament, huh?” Zorian said slowly, giving the simulacrum a nasty look. “Actually, I have a

better idea. You are going to do it.”

“But I’m going to go away at the end of the day,” the simulacrum said, confused.

“Not anymore,” Zorian said. “I’ve been thinking of relaxing the 24-hour rule, and you’re going to be

the first test subject. Congratulations – you’re going to remain active for more than a day, just so you

can take responsibility for what you’ve done.”

“Hey, hey,” the simulacrum protested. “Wait just a minute here! Don’t you think it’s kind of an asshole

move to send a simulacrum on a date instead of you?”

“Why?” Zorian asked with a malicious smile. “You’re the one she spoke to, so it’s only fair that you

be the one to do it.”

“Yes, well… I’m still just made of ectoplasm and we’re meeting in a tea house,” the simulacrum said.

“I’ll probably be expected to drink something, and I kind of can’t. I’m totally solid and homogenous

from the neck down.”

Huh, he didn’t know that. He knew that simulacrums had to sleep just as well as he did, because he

tried to leave one to work over night once and found it snoring on the floor in the morning. As for

things like food and water, he’d never really thought about it – the spell description on the scroll said

a simulacrum didn’t need any sustenance besides magic so he didn’t think there was anything there

to worry about.

“You know what?” Zorian sighed. “You’re right. I should be the one going, if only for Akoja’s sake.”

“Right. I’m glad you can see reason,” the simulacrum said, clearly relieved.

“However,” Zorian added with louder voice. “That doesn’t mean you’re completely off the hook. You

remember what I said earlier?”

“No?” the simulacrum said slowly.

“I said I was thinking of relaxing the 24-hour rule,” Zorian patiently reminded him. “That still applies,

and you’re still going to be a test rat for that.”

He quickly gathered all the maps, brochures and partially filled out information tables and

unceremoniously thrusted them at the simulacrum.

“Congratulations,” Zorian said blandly. “You just earned yourself a one-way ticket to Koth. Your job,

which you have no option but to accept, is to find a way to cross more than 7000 kilometers in less

than a week. Good luck.”

“Oh, come on!” the simulacrum protested. “That’s impossible and you know it! Hey! Hey, come back

here!”

But Zorian wasn’t listening. He had less than two days to figure out what kind of nonsense his

previous simulacrums had set up for him.

Beside the current situation with Akoja, that is.

- break -

The small, out of the way tea house Zorian and Akoja were currently in had a bit of a reputation

among students. Not all of them – before the time loop, Zorian had no idea it even existed – but

among the more relationship-focused students of the academy, this place was famous as a good

place for a romantic meet-up. As such, there was no doubt in Zorian’s mind what Akoja was trying to

say when she asked him if he wanted to meet with her here – the fact she picked this place in

particular made it pretty clear she was expressing romantic interest in him.

The… date… had gone well in Zorian’s opinion. Neither Zorian nor Akoja were very talkative people,

so most of the time passed in awkward silence. Still, they did chat a little and he didn’t make Akoja

run off in tears or storm off angrily out of the tea house – considering how his previous evening with

Akoja had gone, this was a massive success!

He gulped down the last dregs of his tea, which had gone thoroughly cold by now, and took a good

look at Akoja. She looked away shyly, projecting a mixture of discomfort and excitement in response

to his attention. She was a thin girl, with short brown hair and expensive-looking glasses. The

clothes she wore were fancier than she usually had on her, but still very conservative and modest –

all muted colors and not a bit of extra skin visible anywhere.

She wasn’t a classical beauty, but he’d still describe her as kind of attractive. Especially when she

was blushing and being shy, like she was right now.

She was so hard to figure out. Yes, she was kind of crushing on him, but he was pretty sure there

was more to it than that. Out of concern for her privacy, he had refrained from peeking at her surface

thoughts and limited himself to what his passive empathy was telling him. The more the date

progressed, the more certain he became that she wanted to bring some topic up to his attention, but

somehow she always backed down before she went through it. What was that about? He thought

about calling her on it, but was reluctant to do so – things were going pretty well thus far, so why risk

ruining things?

Besides, if this thing was actually important to her, she would surely summon the courage to bring it

up eventually…

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Akoja suddenly said, straightening herself a little. “I, um… can I

ask you something?”

“Yes, go ahead,” Zorian nodded.

“I know… that you don’t get along all that well with your family,” she said, before stopping to study

his reaction.

Oh boy. No wonder she was so reluctant to bring this up, whatever it was. If she were to start a

conversation like that with the pre-time loop Zorian, it would be treading on very dangerous waters.

Now though… well, Zorian liked to believe he had progressed a little since those days, so he just

motioned her to continue.

“A-Anyway,” she continued hurriedly, “you kind of indicated that you want to become independent

because of that. Find a high-paying job somewhere, get yourself a home and such…”

Zorian gave her a curious look.

“I was wondering if you could give me advice in that regard,” she finally asked.

“How to achieve your own independence?” Zorian asked.

“Yes,” she confirmed quickly.

“Why?” he asked curiously. “I thought you got along great with your family.”

“I do,” she said. “We’re pretty close to each other and I have no problems with them. I’m fortunate

that way. It’s just… I don’t really have a good relationship with anyone else.”

Zorian was about to say something before she cut him off.

“Except for the teachers, I know,” she added, giving him a warning look. “But they don’t really care

about the students half as much as they pretend to. Especially not students of average talents like

mine, who come from a non-magical background and only have their work ethics to lean on.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully, not really understanding what she was getting at. As for Akoja herself,

she remained silent and thoughtful for a few seconds, and Zorian got the impression she was

thinking of how to explain things further. Thus, he simply waited and refrained from interrupting her.

“Did you ever get the impression that the academy was just milking us for cash?” she finally asked.

Zorian reeled back a little, caught off guard by the question. Did he think that? Well, there were

plenty of things he felt they were doing wrong, but…

“No, not really,” he admitted. “Sorry. Why do you think so?”

“Well, until the Splinter Wars and Weeping thinned out the number of Noble Houses and other

‘respectable’ sources of students, the Cyoria’s Royal Academy of Magical Arts didn’t even think of

allowing people like us, with no prominent ancestry, into its halls. I’m pretty sure we’re only here

because the academy was faced with a choice of either cutting costs or accepting riff-raff in for

money. And picked money in the end, of course.”

“Ah,” Zorian said. “Yes, you’re probably right there. But I wouldn’t describe that as ‘milking us for

money’ personally.”

“Maybe I’m just getting paranoid,” Akoja sighed. “I’m getting a bit disappointed in academy staff

these days. Anyway, the point is that I’m not sure how useful the academy diploma is going to be for

me. My family paid a lot of money for me to be here, and they expect great things from me in the

future. When I had just come here, I thought that if I just tried my best in class and excelled, that it

would all work out. Now I’m not so sure. And I don’t want to go back to my family and beg for help.

They’d help me, I know… but I don’t want to disappoint them. I don’t want to be a burden.”

“So you’re hoping I can give you some advice in how to find a well-paying job, affordable housing

and so on,” Zorian finished.

Before the time loop, it was unlikely that Zorian would have been able to advise her much. At the

end of the day, his idea was quite similar to her own – excel in your studies and everything would

hopefully work itself out in the end. They just had a slightly different definition of what constitutes

excelling. Now, though, he actually could recommend a few places to her. He had checked out the

employment opportunities a couple of times, though by that point he had been severely overqualified

for most of them and had abandoned the project in disappointment. Still, he felt that it was actually

smarter of her to forget about that for now and focus on excelling in her magic studies… though

perhaps in a slightly more focused manner.

“Just pick one field of magic and focus the bulk of your effort there,” he said. “I’d normally suggest

spell formula, since being good at those is very well paid… but I noticed you don’t like math much,

so maybe not. How do you feel about alteration?”

“It’s fine, I guess,” she shrugged.

“Try focusing on that, then,” he suggested. “It’s one of the better paying fields. Plus, Ilsa is a master

of that type of magic and she seems to like you, so you might be able to get some help out of her

with that as your focus.”

“I see,” she said, looking thoughtful.

“Also, I’m pretty good at alteration,” he noted. “I might be able to give you a bit of help if you get

stuck with it.”

Actually, he would be able to help her with just about any field of magic. But it would sound stupidly

boastful to say that, so best to be a little modest about his self-praise.

There as a long pause as Akoja digested all this and fiddled nervously with her teacup.

“So,” Zorian said, ending the silence. “Was this all?”

“Hm?” she mumbled, broken out of her reverie. She looked panicked for a moment. “Oh. Well, I…

yes. I guess.”

“I see,” Zorian said. “That’s a bit of a shame. When you asked us to meet here, I thought you were

actually asking me out on a date.”

“I, w-well, it’s not… it was part of the whole, I-” she stammered.

“Relax, I’m just joking with you,” he said with a light laugh.

“Jerk,” she huffed. “But, um… I kind of do like you…”

“I have to be honest here – I’m not really interested in relationships right now,” he told her bluntly. So

long as he was stuck in the time loop, he had no intention of pursuing a relationship with anyone. “I

know this sounds a little heartless, but…”

“I understand,” she sighed, sagging a little. A surprisingly level-headed reaction to a rejection. “Since

you’re being so honest, tell me straight – do I have any chance at all with you?”

“I don’t know,” Zorian admitted. “We’re so different from each other…”

“How so?” she asked, sounding more curious than insulted. “We seem quite similar from where I’m

standing.”

“Well, you’re far more concerned about rules and reputation than I am, for one thing…” Zorian said.

She gave him an exasperated look.

“I’d have to be blind to not notice that you don’t care about propriety to the same extent I do,” she

said. “Yet I still like you. Surely that means I’m willing to work with you on it, right?”

‘Work with me or work on trying to change me?’ Zorian wanted to ask. He could be wrong, but he got

the impression that Akoja saw him less as his own person and more as raw material to turn into

something more to her liking. But no, that would be too confrontational and the date would only go

downward from there. So he just glossed over her question and moved on.

Despite him refusing to become an item with her, the date ended pretty amiably from there. Perhaps

because he didn’t categorically refuse her and she still thought she might have a chance with him?

Whatever the case, they agreed to meet again next week in a more neutral location, ostensibly so

Zorian could give her the material he gathered about potential places of employment, costs of living

in different cities and so on.

He didn’t know what to think of the whole thing in the end. When he heard his simulacrums had set

him up on a date with Akoja, he thought this could only end badly. In his opinion, he and Akoja were

very incompatible with one another. After today’s meeting, though, he could almost see it working

out in the end.

He so didn’t need this right now…

Well. Could be worse, he supposed – his simulacrums could have set him up with Neolu instead. He

had found out that she was also someone they had befriended over the course of the current restart,

for whatever reason, and a sneak peek at her thoughts told him she wasn’t exactly opposed to

getting involved with him. If he had ended up on a date with her, everyone in the academy would

have known about it by the end of the day. At least Akoja had some sense of discretion. Thankfully,

Neolu was kind of traditional in mindset, and would never ask someone out the way Akoja did – she

would expect a guy to make the first move.

He was going to have to supervise simulacrums he sent on boring tasks like going to class a lot

closer in the future.

- break -

“You have got to be kidding me,” simulacrum number 2 said incredulously. “500 silver coins just for a

teleport to Zixia? Do you think I grow money on trees or something?”

The man he was talking to, a bald, heavily-tattooed man in his forties, simply scowled at him in

response.

“No like, can get lost,” he told Zorian in broken Ikosian.

The simulacrum sighed in frustration and walked away. The original might be swimming in cash right

now, but he wasn’t. There was only so much money he could take with him when he left Eldemar, so

he couldn’t afford to be too profligate with his funds. This was especially true because every country

had its own currency, so he couldn’t just bring stacks of paper money to pay people with – Eldemar’s

paper bills weren’t worth much outside Altazia. Hell, they weren’t worth much in some places in

Altazia, either. One of the tiny statelets he visited hated Eldemar so much he had nearly gotten

attacked when he tried to pay a mage with their money.

No, if he wanted to complete his journey, he needed to carry things that had more universal value –

gold, silver and gems. And since those things were both heavy and fairly bulky, he could only bring

so much with him.

Simulacrum number 2 grumbled to himself discontentedly. When he had started his journey, he was

so sure he had thought of a genius solution. If the teleport platform network was too slow and

inconvenient, he thought, why not just find teleport-capable mages and pay them to teleport him

personally? Combined with an occasional teleport of his own when he couldn’t find anyone willing to

provide this service, and he felt the idea of getting to Koth in less than a week might not be so crazy

after all!

Well… it was a little harder than that. First of all, he had a somewhat skewed image of how common

teleport capable mages were. Especially mages that could teleport over large distances and could

bring other people with them. These kind of people were very rare, and could only be reliably found

in large cities and other places where mages naturally congregate. In addition, not every such mage

was a heavy traveler, and often had an extremely limited selection of places they could teleport to.

Finally, on top of all that, accepting Zorian’s deal was technically illegal dodging of border checks –

some mages wouldn’t do it at all because of it, or charged very steep prices for their services.

But still, despite all these issues, the plan had been working fairly well so long as he was still

traveling through Altazia. Once he entered the Shivan Archipelago and the Xlotic states, though,

another problem with the idea made itself known.

He didn’t speak the local language.

Zorian knew three languages – the common Ikosian that was spoken throughout Altazia in various

dialects, the local Khusky tongue that peasantry around Cirin used in their daily lives and the ‘High

Ikosian’ that was used in scholarly works and international trade.

Even among mages, fluency in High Ikosian was not common. Thus, if Zorian wanted to question

people for information and negotiate, he often had to resort to common Ikosian. The worked out

pretty well in Altazia, but quickly became a big headache outside of it. It was true that both the

Shivan Archipelago and the Xlotic states were once part of the Ikosian empire, but while these

places spoke common Ikosian, this was such an alien dialect of Ikosian, at least to Zorian’s ears,

that he could barely understand them. Additionally, many of these places were like Zorian’s own

home region, in that many of the regular inhabitants spoke mainly in their own native tongue and

only knew the smattering of common Ikosian for use in trade and such. The Ikosian Empire may

have conquered these places and forced the Ikosian language to be used by the administration, but

local languages were still there beneath it all.

This was especially true in Shivan Archipelago, where every damn island seemed to have its own

local language and dialect.

He thought that was bad, but as he traveled ever southward along the coast of Miasina, he realized

this problem was only going to get worse. Koth had never been successfully conquered by Ikosia,

due to being separated from northern Miasina by a giant desert (much smaller in those times, but

still present) and an imposing mountain range that cut the continent nearly in half. As a

consequence, they spoke completely alien tongues that Zorian couldn’t understand in the slightest.

On top of that, the further south he went, the darker the people’s skin tone became, and the more

exotic their facial features got in comparison to his own. People recognized him as a weird stranger

on sight, and were intensely suspicious of him the moment he approached them.

The area he was currently in was especially bad, because it was very sparsely populated and the

settlement he was in was the only congregation of mages for several hundred kilometers around…

and the people inside it knew it. Which was why they were trying to bleed him dry whenever he tried

to purchase their services.

Oh well. It could be worse.

He could still be attending classes at the academy, for one. Now that would have been a real

nightmare.

He did wonder how the original’s date with Akoja went, though. He would have to pester the original

for details again when he contacted him for his daily report.

Chapter 065

Dangerous Ground

Far to the north of Cyoria, square in the middle of a heavily forested mountain range, there was a

secluded valley devoid of any vegetation. Instead, it was covered in sharp, broken rocks of all

shapes and sizes. There was no obvious reason for the place to be so lifeless and desolate,

especially considering how verdant the surrounding mountains were. As he stood on a cliff

overlooking the valley, Zorian wondered about that. Was the valley so rocky and desolate because

of what made its home here, or was it the other way around and the valley’s inhabitants had picked it

precisely because it was so suitable for themselves? Probably the former, but one could never quite

know… there could be some subtle geomantic magic surrounding the place.

“Zorian,” Zach said, interrupting his thoughts. “The view is… nice, I guess. If you like rocks or

something. But why the hell are we here, exactly?”

“You have no appreciation for nature’s wonders,” Zorian sighed. Assuming this was actually a

natural wonder, that is, and not something the earth elementals had done to make their home more

comfy for themselves, anyway. “You were with me when we talked to that hunter community a few

hours ago, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Zach nodded. “You told them we’re searching for elementals and they sent us here. Which is

fine and all, but why are we searching for elementals all of the sudden? You should know by now

that I really hate the whole mysterious act. If you don’t start explaining things right now, I’m starting a

wrestling match with you right here on the edge of this cliff.”

Zorian gave him an incredulous look, before pointing at the sharp, spike-like rocks at the bottom of

the cliff.

“Don’t think for a second I won’t,” Zach warned. “One restart cut short is a small price to pay if it will

teach you not to do this crap anymore.”

“It wasn’t anything sinister,” Zorian sighed. “It’s just that it’s a pretty crazy idea and I didn’t want to

bother you with it. I did say you could sit this one out, didn’t I?”

“You forget who you’re talking to,” Zach smiled widely. “I’m the guy who fought the most infamous

dragon of our time just to see if I could do it, descended as deep into the Dungeon as I could before

dying and took on the entire Ibasan invasion force all by myself. I’m no stranger to crazy ideas.”

“True,” Zorian said.

“Besides,” Zach said, sounding more serious this time. “We’re in this together. Stop trying to do

things alone, it’s getting seriously annoying.”

“Fine, fine, I get it,” said Zorian, raising his hands up in defeat. “Look… the point of all this is to try

and find where the other primordials are imprisoned.”

“What?” Zach asked incredulously. “We’re having so many problems with this Panaxeth thing, and

you want to find more?”

“Yes,” Zorian nodded. “Well, maybe. As I said, it’s a pretty crazy idea. It’s just… I was thinking I

might need to set loose a primordial into the world, and I realized that doing that with Panaxeth

wouldn’t be a good idea. Panaxeth’s prison is in the middle of Cyoria, and too much attention is

already on it. So I thought, why don’t I find my own primordial, then? One that is in some isolated

place where nobody is going to disturb us while we work?”

Zach looked at him like he just declared he was secretly a shapeshifted dragon and started

sprouting horns.

“You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” he asked.

“What, described the idea in the most disturbing possible way?” Zorian asked back with a smirk.

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “It’s true, though – that’s essentially what I was thinking about.”

“Why, though?” Zach asked. “Is this about finding a way for you to leave the time loop?”

Zorian looked at his fellow time traveler in surprise.

“Don’t be so surprised,” Zach scoffed. “You already told me how space itself seemed to collapse

when Panaxeth tried to leave his prison. It’s natural to wonder if that kind of spatial hole could be

used to fashion some kind of passage out of this place. I’ve thought of it too. Admittedly, I have no

idea how you could actually go about doing that…”

“Neither do I,” Zorian admitted. “But it’s the only thing I could think of.”

Zach hummed thoughtfully. “I thought you said the restart immediately collapsed when Panaxeth got

out of his prison, though?” he said. “Last I spoke to you, you thought Panaxeth getting out of his box

was one of the conditions for terminating the time loop. Did you change your mind about that or do

you have a way around that?”

“It’s obvious the time loop can be fooled in many ways,” Zorian said. “As such, I thought that maybe

if we enclose the area in a pocket dimension and then release the primordial, the time loop might not

detect that as a breach.”

“Why do you… oh!” Zach said, eyes widening as he realized what Zorian was getting at. “Because

the primordial is still technically imprisoned! It would have to breach the pocket dimension we

created before the time loop would consider it ‘free’.”

“That’s the idea,” Zorian said with a nod.

“Would the primordial have any trouble doing that, though?” Zach asked with a frown. “I doubt we

could make a prison anywhere near as strong as these divinely crafted prisons that are currently

holding them.”

“We could always layer multiple pocket dimensions around ourselves,” said Zorian. “At least I hope. I

don’t know how pocket dimensions work, but they can obviously be stacked on top of each other to

some extent. Otherwise, the time loop wouldn’t be able to recreate the various pocket dimensions

scattered around the world.”

“You know, this raises an important question,” Zach said. “Where are we going to find someone to

teach us how to make pocket dimensions? I mean, that’s one of the rarest magical disciplines out

there. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a mage that can create one. I admit I haven’t been looking

for those secrets very hard, but still. What’s worse, you’re talking about pocket dimension creation of

incredible scale and sophistication – we need someone who is incredibly good at this obscure

magical skill, not someone who can barely do it. Finding such a person… I think this could be even

harder than gathering all of the pieces of the Key.”

Zorian patiently listened to Zach’s concerns, nodding slightly from time to time. It was all so very

true. And yet…

“I’m pretty sure I already know a mage that is very good at creating and manipulating pocket

dimensions,” Zorian said.

“What? Who?” Zach demanded.

“Silverlake,” Zorian said, sighing heavily. He really didn’t want to admit he needed her, but…

“The crazy witch lady that sent you to kill the grey hunter?” Zach asked incredulously.

“The same,” Zorian confirmed. “Think about it. Why else can’t we locate her damn hut? I refuse to

believe her wards are good enough to resist a systematic sweep of the whole area from both of us.

It’s just not possible. And she isn’t editing our memories, either – unless she is a godlike mind mage

that makes even aranea elders look like children in comparison, I would at least be able to tell my

mind had been tampered with after the fact.”

“You think she hides her hut inside a pocket dimension?” Zach asked.

“I don’t see what else it could be,” Zorian said.

“Huh. Well, I guess we better find a way to get those stupid eggs soon, then,” Zach said with a

careless shrug.

As if that would be the end of it. Zorian had a suspicion that even if they brought Silverlake the eggs,

this would just be the start of their headaches with her.

Regardless, this was the end of that topic for a while. After a short discussion of the best route to

take through the rocky labyrinth, they used a flight spell to float down the cliff and onto one of the

bigger rocky outcroppings jutting from the valley. From there, they decided to conserve mana by

trying to advance on foot. Also, the hunters claimed that the earth elementals did not appreciate

people flying over their home and would hurl rocks at people who offended them in such a way.

An hour later, they realized they had taken the place too lightly. The landscape held no predators

trying to ambush them, but it was exceptionally hard and dangerous to traverse on foot. The ground

was rough and uneven, with a labyrinthine arrangement of ridges and rocky outcroppings, and it was

often far less solid than it appeared to be at first glance. A careless step could easily result in it

crumbling away beneath one’s foot, with disastrous consequences – the stones of the valley were

very angular and sharp, and sometimes even shaped like knives and caltrops, so any falls or

imbalanced flailing easily led to serious injury.

Neither Zorian nor Zach ended up injured, but it did make their progress terribly slow and miserable.

“Ugh,” Zach said, casually firing a weak disintegration wave at the nearby rock in order to smooth it

out a bit. Once all the edges and spikes were gone, he sat down on the stone and gave Zorian a

long look. “I must say, those hunters we talked to have quite a penchant for understatements. When

they said the elementals were ‘a bit tricky to reach’, I expected something easier than this.”

“Well, they’ve been living in these mountains for months,” Zorian said. “Maybe for them, this is just

tricky rather than a hard slog. But yeah, this is getting a little ridiculous. At this rate, it will take us a

whole day to reach the center.”

“So… do we just fly there or what?” Zach offered.

“The hunters said the elementals fire on people flying over their home,” Zorian said, shaking his

head. “I know we could probably survive their barrage, but we’re here to ask for their advice. We

don’t want to piss them off before the talks even begin. Let me try something.”

Having said that, Zorian quickly fished out a brilliant red potion out of his backpack and downed it.

Grey hunters had amazing senses. The most prominent of these, of course, was their ability to

sense magic, but that was actually just the tip of the iceberg in regards to a grey hunter’s ability to

perceive the environment. By now, Zach and Zorian had figured out that grey hunters also had an

incredibly acute ability to sense air currents and the vibrations in the ground. Together with their

amazing magic perception and other, more mundane senses, it gave grey hunters an almost

omniscient awareness of everything in their immediate vicinity. The potions of grey hunter perception

that Zach and Zorian had been creating in recent restarts mostly ignored all of these in favor of

focusing on the grey hunter’s magic perception. This was both because they were treading new

ground and had to prioritize, but also because even if they could condense the totality of grey

hunter’s perception inside a single potion, it was doubtful that either of them could process the

information without blacking out.

Recently, though, Zorian had decided to experiment a little with the tremor sense part of the grey

hunter’s perception and commissioned a potion that would grant this ability from the alchemist they

were working with. That was the potion he had just drunk, and this was going to be its first real field

test.

About 10 seconds after he drank the potion, Zorian felt his skin tingle before his awareness…

expanded. It was muted at first, but that changed quickly the moment Zorian took a step forward. He

felt his foot hit the ground in a way he never had before, and the alien sensation almost brought him

to the ground right then and there. A strong, vivid pulse emanated from his foot, spreading itself

through the rocky labyrinth around him before being reflected back at him. In less than a second, he

had a three dimensional map of his surroundings impressed into his mind.

“Give me a few minutes to get used to this,” he told Zach.

After fifteen minutes of pacing back and forth and jumping in place, Zorian was reasonably sure he

could crudely interpret what his new sense was telling him. However, even this, which was probably

just a shadow of what the real grey hunter was capable of, should allow him to effortlessly navigate

through the valley. He motioned for Zach to follow him and they restarted their journey towards the

elementals’ home.

Travel was very fast this time. Every step that Zach and Zorian took sent vivid pulses through the

ground around them, mapping their surroundings in Zorian’s mind and allowing him to identify which

ground was too unstable to support their weight. Zorian felt this was probably how the grey hunter

always managed to detect buried traps that Zorian had tried to snare it with, even if they were totally

non-magical. Every time it performed one of its damn jumps, the shockwaves generated by its

landing would pulse through the ground around it, informing it of not just the layout of the ground

around it, but also of its contents.

But that was a thought for another time, because it wasn’t long before they had finally reached the

place they had been looking for.

They knew they had reached it because the rocks around them crumbled to pieces and six earth

elementals stepped out of them to block their path.

They were a diverse bunch. One was a huge boulder with four stubby legs and a pair of massive

rocky arms that could probably crush both of them to paste with a single hand swipe. The other was

a six-legged cat-lizard-something carved out of shiny stone, its knife-like scales bristling at their

intrusion. The third was a giant elongated human head, soundlessly bobbing up and down through

the ground, which rippled and flowed like water in its presence. The fourth was an incredibly lifelike

obsidian centipede, looking more like an actual monster than an elemental spirit.

The fifth and six earth elementals, though, were clearly the leaders of the bunch. Both of them were

around three and a half meters tall, fairly humanoid in appearance and armed with actual metal

weaponry that looked human-made rather than formed out of stone and the like. One of them had a

muscular-looking figure and four faces arranged around its head, and carried in its hands a massive

sword. The other looked like an old man, with a beard made out of knife-like stones and a long,

whip-like tail trailing behind him. This one carried a huge mace in his hands, waving it in the air

menacingly.

After a few tense seconds, the four-faced elemental stepped forward towards them.

“Forbidden,” he told them simply. Zorian kind of expected the elemental’s voice to be all booming

and gravely, considering its size and composition, but it was actually very crisp and spoken at

normal volume.

“We bring gifts,” Zorian countered, bringing out a box out of his jacket pocket and showing the

contents to the giant elemental in front of him. Zach proceeded to do the same.

The boxes held a pair of fist-sized red stones, glowing with inner light. The so called ‘dragonheart

stones’ were highly coveted by some magical creatures, including earth elementals. These stones

were hard to acquire, as they could only be found deep within the Dungeon as a rule, and humans

had no real use for them aside from making expensive jewelry and trading them to creatures that

coveted them. Thankfully, Zach had encountered an entire cave full of them at one point, so it was

simple enough to acquire some.

The moment the earth elementals saw the stones, they quickly changed their tune. The lesser

elementals around them tried to scuttle over to have a closer look but the two leaders quickly caused

them to stay back with a few menacing movements. After that, the four-faced elemental spoke again,

again limiting himself to a single word.

“Come,” he said simply.

The four lesser elementals stayed behind, while the two humanoid giants led them to one of the

large rock formations that turned out to be hollow. Inside, they found an interior that wouldn’t look

terribly out of place in a human dwelling – there were tables, chairs, shelves, cabinets and even

some potted plants. Items of obviously human making were scattered throughout the area, some of

them hopelessly broken. Zorian assumed they were battle trophies to warn and awe human visitors

against treachery, but it was hard to be sure – spirits were notorious for having very alien sense of

aesthetics, so maybe the elementals just found the arrangement pleasing to the eye somehow.

In the back of the chamber, opposite of the entrance, stood the elemental they came here to see.

Stonechild, the elder elemental.

Zorian didn’t know what he had expected to see. A massive stone monolith with a giant face carved

in it? A miniature mountain? A larger version of the humanoid elementals that escorted them to this

place?

What he definitely didn’t expect was to find himself facing what appeared to be a ten-year-old boy.

And not one that was crudely carved out of stone, either – Stonechild’s form was incredibly lifelike

and realistic, and he looked like nothing more than a real human child, if one whose skin was bit

browner than was common this far to the north.

There was only one thing hinting at Stonechild’s elemental nature – his eyes were solid black,

devoid of any internal structure a real human eye should have. It was as if someone set out to make

a flawless human replica but then ran out of patience in the end and decided to just socket a pair of

polished black gems into the eye sockets and call it a day.

“Welcome,” Stonechild said, his voice steady and very natural sounding. He smiled reassuringly at

them. “We don’t get many visitors here, so my manners are a little rusty and I have little to offer you

with. I apologize in advance for my poor hospitality. Would you like a glass of water?”

Zach and Zorian glanced at each other uncertainly. This… was not quite how they had imagined the

great elder elemental would behave towards them.

“I could go for a glass of water, yeah,” Zach said with a shrug.

Stonechild nodded to himself in satisfaction and walked over to a nearby shelf, which held several

ceramic jugs and a collection of glass containers of various sorts. Stonechild picked up what was

clearly a pickle jar at first, but then hesitated for a moment before putting it back on the shelf. He

then picked up a proper drinking glass instead.

Zorian watched as the elder elemental went about pouring Zach a glass of water, shifting in place

nervously. Strange as it may sound, Stonechild worried him a lot more than the two hulking

elemental guards that stood vigilantly by the entrance of this place. He didn’t look as imposing as

them, but his appearance was a dangerous sign all on its own. It was well known that when it came

to spirits, the more humanlike they were, the more wary one had to be around them. Not necessarily

because that made them more powerful, but because it meant they understood humans well enough

to pretend to be one. This understanding, in turn, meant they could counter, fight and manipulate

humans in a way their more ignorant fellows could not.

Stonechild’s understanding of human mentality and culture made him a lot more dangerous than he

would be if he was just a bit more powerful than your average earth elemental.

It was interesting to see this kind of an elemental here in total wilderness, though. Elementals were

some of the most ancient spirits known to man, but also one of the most alien and incomprehensible.

The vast majority of them couldn’t even speak in a human-comprehensible manner, nevermind

understand human logic and attitudes. This inability of human and elementals to understand one

another, coupled with the fact that elementals often occupied land that humans coveted and that

elementals typically reacted to provocations by attacking any human within reach (most elementals

had trouble telling human individuals apart from one another), led to many bitter conflicts between

the two groups in the past. Elementals that understood humanity to the level that Stonechild did

were vanishingly rare and usually involved the elemental in question allying itself to a human

community for several generations. Most of them served as protector spirits of various Houses or

brokered some kind of trade deal with the local authorities in exchange for being left alone.

For Stonechild to live in this kind of isolated location, away from any significant human community,

yet still know so much about them… it was weird. Zorian suspected he might have originally lived

somewhere in the south, but was driven away from his previous home by something.

“I hear you bring gifts for me,” Stonechild eventually said.

“We sure do,” Zach grinned. The two of them handed their dragonheart stones to the elemental, who

accepted them without any apparent excitement or comment. He rotated the stones in his palms for

a few moments before setting them aside on the nearby table.

“It is a good gift,” Stonechild said. “But is it really a gift? I would never claim to be an expert on

humanity, but in my experience your kind is rarely this generous for no reason.”

“It’s a gift,” Zach said. “We do want something from you, but we’re willing to pay for it. Those stones

are yours no matter what you do.”

“Even if I throw you two out right now?” Stonechild asked curiously.

“Even then,” Zorian confirmed.

“Hmm. I think I like you two,” Stonechild said. “So what is it that you want from me? I warn you in

advance that I dislike fighting. Me and my kind will not be your mercenaries, no matter how much

you offer to pay.”

“We’re only after knowledge,” Zorian said.

“Only knowledge?” Stonechild repeated, his black eyes narrowing slightly. “And yet you’re willing to

pay such a heavy price, just for a chance to petition me for it. It is surely not ‘just’ knowledge, then.

What kind of forbidden secrets are you after?”

“We want to know where the primordials were imprisoned,” Zach said.

Thus far, Stonechild had been very serene and self-assured in his mannerisms. It was somewhat at

odds with his child-like appearance, to be honest. However, when Zach mentioned what they were

after, Stonechild actually flinched a little.

“Why would you seek the ancient blood?” Stonechild asked, leaning forward towards them. “No

matter what your reasons are, you’re only inviting disaster upon yourself. There is no gain to be had

there.”

“You say that, but I heard there are people who gained great powers by binding the blood of

primordials to themselves,” Zorian said. It wasn’t something he intended to do, but he still wanted to

hear what Stonechild had to say about it.

“Artifacts of forgotten wars at the beginning of time,” Stonechild said, waving his hand dismissively in

the air. “Should you find one of these out there in the vast world, unclaimed by anyone, that is

obviously a great boon for you. But to tamper with the cages that hold back those of the ancient

blood is utter foolishness. Since the time of their imprisonment, no one has ever received gift from

their kind.”

“Are you saying they’re actively malicious?” Zach asked curiously.

“Do you hate the bugs eating your crops? Do you torture mosquitos for drinking your blood?”

Stonechild asked. “We are all nothing to them – elemental and human both.”

“Right, right, we’re not people to them so they can do whatever they want to us,” Zach said. “It’s fine,

though – we don’t really want anything from the primordials themselves. What we’re really interested

is those fancy pocket dimensions that hold them.”

“Pocket what?” Stonechild asked, cocking his head to the side in confusion. Apparently he never

encountered that particular term and couldn’t figure out the meaning from the context provided.

“Their cages,” Zach clarified. “The thing that holds them outside our reality.”

“Ah,” Stonechild nodded. “That is… less disturbing. But I caution you to forget the idea anyway.

Cracking the prisons is probably beyond you… thankfully… but you might end up accidentally

contacting the prisoner or attract unwanted attention. Few such prisons are truly unguarded.”

“We’d really want to take a look at one, anyway. Do you think we could come to some kind of

agreement?” said Zorian, motioning towards the dragonheart stones with his head. “There are more

stones like that where those came from. And we might have more gifts for you besides.”

“Even if I was willing to help you with this, I honestly do not know where the ancient blood was

buried,” Stonechild said. “I cannot help you.”

The elder elemental disguised as a child glanced towards the stones for a second before shifting his

attention back to them.

“However…” he said. “I might know a couple of other elementals that would be able to help you.”

“Ah, that’s fine too, I guess,” Zorian said. “I suppose you’d be willing to give this information to us?”

Stonechild smiled widely.

“For a price,” he said.

- break -

“Yes,” Glittering River of Stars said, sagging a little. “We will agree to let you observe us use the

Bakora Gate in exchange for… I can’t believe I’m saying this… time travel related favors.”

“Finally. It was about freaking time,” Zach muttered under his breath.

It turned out he hadn’t been quiet enough, because River of Stars bristled slightly at his words and

immediately turned to him.

“What would you know? This was a difficult decision for us! Even if you’re telling the truth about time

travel, we have no way of enforcing this deal! You can renege on it easily enough, and we won’t

even know an agreement existed in the first place!”

“Yeah, and that’s why your elders refused to accept a mere promise alone,” Zach shot back. “We

paid you an absurd amount of crystalized mana and other valuables for this ‘favor’. Plus we

destroyed that nest of serpent-bearded toads for you as a sign of good faith.”

“And if you’re telling the truth about the time loop, none of that will matter in the long run, will it?”

River of Stars asked rhetorically.

Zorian thought about getting involved, but ultimately decided that any words would just be throwing

oil into the fire. Truthfully, he understood the doubts and hesitation of the Silent Doorway Adepts all

too well. He would feel the same in their position. He actually hadn’t expected this negotiation to

succeed at all in this restart – he expected it would take at least two or three times before he learned

how to approach them correctly. However, saying that out loud would be the equivalent of shooting

himself in the foot. The aranea probably wouldn’t appreciate it much, and Zach would feel betrayed.

His fellow time traveler had been getting steadily more annoyed with the colony as they dragged

their many feet and the end of the restart inexorably approached, so he probably wouldn’t appreciate

Zorian taking their side – even as a diplomatic tactic.

Thankfully, after staring at each other really hard, Zach and River of Stars decided to mutually back

down.

“Whatever,” River of Stars said. “The elders have reached their decision, so there is no point in

arguing this. Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” Zorian spoke up. “Do you have something that would help us convince your web we’re telling

the truth in future restarts?”

“Ah, yes,” River of Stars said. “There was some discussion about that. We have… something. We

have no idea how useful it will be to you, since we’ve never actually made any contingencies in case

of time travel being real, but you of all people can afford to do some trial and error on this. Hold on.”

She was still and silent for about ten seconds, probably engaging in telepathic communication with

the rest of her web.

“Prepare for a memory packet transfer,” she told him, before sending a telepathic probe at his

mental shields.

Zorian allowed her to establish contact, and she immediately shoved a small memory packet at him.

He quickly perused the contents, noticing it mostly held meaningless strings of numbers (well,

meaningless to him at least) as well as some kind of detailed map of the region surrounding their

web. He unraveled the memory packet and repackaged the information into a memory packet of his

own – that way he wouldn’t have to worry about it decaying on him the way the matriarch’s memory

packet did – and then gently pushed at the connection with River of Stars, signaling to her to end the

connection.

She did as he asked, but she couldn’t help but take a quick peek at his memories as she withdrew.

Zorian didn’t even try to stop her – instead, he simply pushed a memory of him being stabbed to

death in one of the earliest restarts at her memory probe, causing her to flinch a little and hastily

break contact.

“It’s rare to see a human so well versed in telepathic conflict,” she said, a little awkwardly.

“Thank you,” Zorian said. “Can we see the gate now?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, a little more respectfully. Apparently his little show of telepathic sophistication

had humbled her a bit. Huh. He made a mental note to challenge one of their elders to a telepathic

duel in future restarts, just to establish his telepathic credentials. Maybe they’d look down on them

less if he did that. “I’ll lead the way.”

River of Stars led them down the twisting tunnels of the aranean settlement, far deeper into the

colony than they’d ever been allowed to go before. There, in a large underground chamber, stood a

circular stone platform that held a familiar black icosahedron that was the Bakora gate. Well, it was

familiar to Zorian at least.

“You’ve never seen a Bakora gate before?” Zorian asked Zach, who was currently slowly circling the

construct and inspecting it curiously. “In all those countless restarts, it never crossed your mind to

seek one out?”

“No, why would it?” Zach asked, poking the black bars experimentally with his finger. “They don’t

work and nobody knows how to activate them. I’m no researcher – if countless scholars couldn’t get

anything out of them, what could I do? It’s really similar to the Ibasan one, though... you can clearly

tell they were inspired by one of these things when they made theirs.”

“The fact that there is another gate-using group operating around is disturbing,” a nearby aranea

commented. “You should have mentioned that information earlier when you spoke with us.”

“Sorry,” Zorian shrugged. “I didn’t think it was important. So how will this work exactly? Considering

you gathered no less than fifteen araneas here, I’m guessing the activation requires some kind of

group ritual?”

“It is a ritual, yes,” the aranea confirmed. Her name was Marvelous Geode, if he remembered

correctly. Well, her name was quite a bit longer than that actually, but that was what it shortened to

anyway. “It’s not the ‘correct’ way to activate the gate, but it’s the only way we know.”

“What does the ritual involve, exactly?”

“Well…” she hesitated. “First of all, we need to establish contact with the spirit of the gate…”

“Wait, the gate has a spirit?” Zorian asked incredulously. He focused his mind sense on the gate for

the moment. “I don’t sense a mind within it.”

“Of course you can’t,” she said. “The spirit is completely disconnected from the Great Web. Its mind

is permanently dark, much like your friend’s mind is under that spell he keeps constantly active

around us. Yet, the spirit is very much real.”

Marvelous Geode stood a little straighter, giving him a challenging look, as if daring him to contradict

her. He didn’t. While the idea of the Bakora gate having a spirit was a bit weird, he would trust the

Silent Doorway Adepts on this. They did get the gate to work, after all, unlike everybody else.

“So how did you find out about this spirit, then? Do you have someone with soul perception or

something?”

“The spirit cannot be detected through the soul, either. Its soul is shrouded somehow, and does not

show up on casual inspection, even if one is a necromancer. One has to contact the spirit in a very

specific way before it will deign to reveal itself,” Marvelous Geode explained.

That… well, it certainly explained why this gate spirit had remained an unknown thus far. However…

“How did you even find out about this, then?” Zorian asked curiously. “Did you just tinker with the

gate and end up contacting the spirit by accident or…?”

“Well, there was admittedly a whole lot of tinkering involved. The founder of our web was obsessed

with the gate and invested a lot of her time and energies on it. That said, we were rather certain that

there was a spirit in there so our tinkering was directed at establishing contact with the spirit right

from the start,” Marvelous Geode said. “After all, Bakora gates were said to be able to open up

dimensional passages to each other, entirely on their own. That goes against everything we know

about magic items. I’m told you’re quite an artificer, so you no doubt know that magic items never

really cast anything – they can only ever maintain a spell that is anchored to them, and anything else

is an illusion achieved by shifting the spell in question into different modes. For the Bakora gates to

be able to open and close dimensional passages to any gate in the network, they had to be some

kind of spellcaster. And spellcasting requires a soul.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully. Pretty solid logic there, he had to admit. By now, Zach had long gotten

bored of staring at the gate and walked over to stand beside him. As for the rest of the aranea that

weren’t explaining things to Zorian, they were busy carting large quantities of crystalized mana to the

vicinity of the gate.

“The local area has insufficient quantity of ambient mana to power the opening of the gate,”

Marvelous Geode explained. “Once the spirit is contacted and starts opening the dimensional

passage, we have to evaporate a large amount of crystalized mana and funnel it into the gate or the

process will fail.”

“Why not just move the gate deeper into the Dungeon?” Zach asked.

“They can’t,” Zorian said. “It’s well known that Bakora gates cannot be moved from their spots or

they literally fall apart. Most experts are guessing that the icosahedron bars are only the tip of the

iceberg and that part of the gate is embedded into the surrounding rocks and the like.”

“Yes,” Marvelous Geode said. “We have heard about that, which was why it was never attempted.

There was some talk about drilling a hole to the deeper layers near the gate in order to create an

artificial mana well… but nobody really knows just how much damage to their surroundings Bakora

gates can take before they break down, so that idea never went anywhere. The gate is too precious

to risk like that, even if it would save us a lot of money.”

With all preparations done, Marvelous Geode excused herself and joined the rest of her fellows in

setting up the ritual to contact the gate spirit. After some frantic running and pushing, the araneas

entered into a circular formation around the icosahedron, forming three concentric lines around the

object. Then they all started casting.

Twenty minutes later, they were still going at it with no visible change.

Eventually Zach couldn’t take it anymore and leaned in towards him.

“Zorian, do you understand anything that is going on here?” Zach whispered to him. “I’m not an

expert on aranean magic, but they seemed to be just repeating the same movements over and over

again…”

“Yeah,” Zorian agreed, studying the ritual with a frown.

It was… strange. He could vaguely recognize the spell they were casting as some kind of soul magic

ritual, similar to the protection rituals that Alanic had taught him. Things that even a person like him

with no soul perception could use. These kind of rituals were lengthy and crude – the magical

equivalent of groping in the dark – but sometimes it was enough. Lukav had used something similar

when he had analyzed his soul in the past for damage and the like.

However, the ritual Silent Doorway Adepts were performing didn’t look like any ritual spell he knew

of. Not that Zorian had witnessed all that many group rituals, but this was still…

He suddenly realized what was bothering him – the movements of the aranea weren’t nearly as

synchronized as they should be.

“It’s not really a group ritual,” Zorian whispered back to Zach. “They are all performing the same

ritual spell independently of one another. And then, when they’re done, they just start over and do it

again and again.”

Zach stared at the fifteen araneas surrounding the gate for a few seconds, before leaning towards

Zorian again.

“Are you saying,” Zach asked him incredulously, “that they’re basically annoying the gate spirit into

revealing itself?”

“Uh, no. That’s not what I was getting at,” Zorian replied. “I think the ritual they use is flawed, and

only works when everything aligns just right… but since they don’t really know how the gate

functions internally, they can’t aim for those circumstances specifically. They can just repeat it over

and over and hope that it eventually works.”

“Why have fifteen of them doing it at once, though?” Zach asked. “It the circumstances aren’t right

for one of them, why would it work for the other fourteen?”

“If you look at them closely, you will see they’re not casting the ritual in unison – that’s what tipped

me off as to what they’re doing, actually. They’ve staggered their casting so that they all finish the

spell one after another. I think that, in practice, getting the ritual to work is just a matter of very

specific timing. By constantly bombarding the gate with contact requests, they make it more likely

that one will actually connect.”

“Ah, I see… so the ritual could conceivably be done by one person alone, but they would likely miss

many windows of opportunity and take way longer than a group like this,” Zach said. “Well… this will

be very annoying if we want to use this ourselves.”

“Yeah,” Zorian agreed unhappily.

Not only was the ritual an aranean creation, meaning Zorian would have to convert it to human-style

spellcasting before he could make use of it, but it was also a very inelegant solution that would be a

pain to set up for someone other than Silent Doorway Adepts. Even if he hired enough mages for

this kind of setup to work, he would still have to teach them the spell itself and then train them to

stagger their casting correctly. Even then, they would never be as good at it as the aranea, since

they didn’t have years of practice with the setup like they did. And the aranea were already at it for

half an hour and still going, so he shuddered to think how long it would take under less than ideal

circumstances. Just how long would this-

A flash of bright light in the center of the icosahedron marked the opening of a dimensional gate

instead. The aranea immediately stopped their repetition and scrambled throughout the chamber in

a sort of organized chaos, evaporating the chunks of crystalized mana and feeding it to the gate

mechanism. The spatial doorway steadily grew, eventually stabilizing into a circular hole in the air

that led… elsewhere.

Zorian glanced at his pocket watch. It took the aranea about 40 minutes to open the gate, most of

which was spent on contacting the gate spirit.

Marvelous Geode scuttled over to them, looking very pleased with herself.

“The passage is open,” she said.

“Does it always take this long to open?” Zach asked.

“Oh no… this was quite fast by past standards. Sometimes it takes as much as two hours before the

gate spirit will deign to respond. This is an auspicious omen for this cooperation.”

Zach and Zorian looked at each other unhappily. Two hours…

“You can try going through it if you wish,” Marvelous Geode said.

“Where does it lead, anyway?” Zorian asked.

“Sulamnon, not far from the port city of Hitamtep,” she said. “Eldemar and Sulamnon have been

engaged in a trade war for a while now, so trading there is quite profitable.”

“You’d probably get a better return by going to more distant lands, though,” Zorian noted. “Are there

distance limitations on Bakora gate use?”

“In theory, no. In practice, getting to very distant lands is impossible for us. In order to connect with

another Bakora gate, we need to first travel to said gate through some other means and contact its

own gate spirit. Only after we receive a… sort of mental key from the gate spirit, can we use our own

gate to reach it.”

“So each gate has its own secret password and you need to get it before you can travel there?” Zach

summarized.

“It’s not very secret – the gate spirit will freely give you its key if you can contact it. But yes, that is

essentially correct,” the aranea confirmed.

“Sounds like you could use someone that can freely travel over human territory and access distant

Bakora gates,” Zorian noted.

“Well, yes. That is the primary thing that our elders hope to gain from this deal,” Marvelous Geode

said carefully. “If you could help us acquire keys to distant gates, this could easily catapult our webs

to unbelievable prosperity. Especially if you can secure us a connection to Miasina. There are no

aranea there, as far as we can tell, so it’s pretty much virgin ground for us to settle… an entire

continent worth of it.”

In the end, the two of them did step through the gate and explored the other site a bit. The Silent

Doorway Adepts were, as it turned out, a territorially discontinuous web, with semi-autonomous

colonies established around each of the gates they traveled to on a regular basis. The colony back

in Eldemar was clearly the main one, though, and that probably wouldn’t change any time soon

since the sub-colonies were denied the knowledge of the gate activation ritual.

They didn’t venture forth from the aranean colony too much. Two people with an obvious Eldemarian

accent were unlikely to be viewed favorably by Sulamnese inhabitants – the two countries hated

each other, after all.

The moment Zorian returned to Cyoria, he sat down at his work desk, called up a memory of the

ritual, vividly preserved in his mind, and set about understanding it and taking it apart. He respected

the aranean achievement and dedication, but there just had to be a better way of doing this.

- break -

“I see,” mumbled Zorian to himself, turning the telepathic relay in his hand. The innocuous-looking

metal plate was connected to the long, long chain of telepathic relays that his simulacrum left behind

him, like breadcrumbs, as it traveled ever further south. He occasionally received reports and

memory packets from the simulacrum, detailing the issues his copy had encountered on the journey.

“Something good?” Zach asked.

“My simulacrum has finally reached Koth,” Zorian said. “Or at least the port town of Jasuka, which is

generally considered to be the entry port to the region.”

“Man, finally,” Zach said. “The restart is going to end in less than two days. I was starting to wonder

what was taking him so long.”

“It’s not that simple…” Zorian protested, feeling compelled to defend his copy. It was a hard and

frustrating journey and Zorian was honestly grateful to his simulacrum for actually attempting his task

seriously instead of doing a half-assed job or giving up half-way through.

“I know, I know,” Zach said, waving his hands in a placating gesture. “There is no need to get all

protective of your precious copy. I’m certainly not going to complain about not having to do anything

but wait while your simulacrums do all the work. And the traveling speed is bound to improve as your

simulacrums figure out better traveling routes in the future. But you have to admit this is kind of

disappointing.”

“Yes,” Zorian admitted. “Especially since all of my simulacrums get dismissed when we enter Black

Rooms and get cut off from the outside world. We really need to figure out how the Ibasans stabilize

their gates, or else I’ll need to send a simulacrum to Koth at least twice per restart.”

“We could always find a Bakora Gate in Koth, send your simulacrum there to open our own gate and

then bring a bunch of Silent Doorway Adepts through it to ask the gate spirit for the password,”

mused Zach. “Then we can just go and use the aranean gate in future restarts.”

“It’s a nice idea, but who knows how long it would take to set up?” Zorian asked rhetorically. “I don’t

know if you noticed, but the Silent Doorway Adepts are a rather suspicious bunch. I don’t know how

quickly we can convince them to cooperate in the future, but…”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, I don’t really like the idea,” Zach agreed. “How is your analysis of

their contact ritual going?”

Zorian’s face twisted into a grimace.

“That bad, huh?” Zach asked with a grin.

“I’ll say this: there is a reason why they’re still using that stupid method instead of switching to

something better. I don’t think I’ll figure out something better any time soon,” Zorian explained

unhappily.

“You might want to work with them instead of away from them in the future,” Zach noted. “They’re

annoying jerks, but I’m sure they’re as interested in making the contact ritual better as we are, and

they have way more experience with it than you do.”

“I guess you’re right,” Zorian agreed. “I think-”

He stopped talking when he noticed his simulacrum was trying to contact him again. Huh. That was

fast. Wonder what that was about…

“Uh, Zach?” he eventually asked.

“Yeah?” Zach asked curiously.

“Do you have anything you should be doing in the near future?”

“I’m bored out of my skull and you know it,” he said. “Why?”

“The simulacrum says he’s in the jungle to the west of Jasuka and that he’s found a perfect spot for

the gate. He’s asking if we want to try opening one right now,” explained Zorian.

Zach thought about it for a few seconds. Or maybe just pretended to think about it – Zach had a flair

for dramatics like that.

“Why not?” he finally said, jumping to his feet. “Let’s go see Koth.”

- break -

Gate was an amazing spell in Zorian’s opinion. Teleport was arguably a more useful piece of magic,

despite the range limitations that forced mages to chain teleports if they wanted to cross any

appreciable distance, but it just didn’t have the same emotional impact that a dimensional gate did.

There was just something emotionally satisfying about crossing continental distances in a single

step.

For example, Zorian had just followed Zach through the dimensional passage he and his simulacrum

had opened, and suddenly went from a hastily secured underground room in Eldemar to a steaming,

verdant jungle in Koth.

It was… louder than he thought it would be. The sheer cacophony of different sounds was

impressive, but he imagined that would get tiresome very fast.

“You have no idea,” his simulacrum grumbled, having read his thoughts. “I especially hate that one

bird that keeps making sounds reminiscent of a dying man’s scream. I really wish that it would shut

up already. I even thought of tracking it down so I could kill it, but I can’t seem to find it in all the

foliage. You’d think something that loud would be trivial to track down, but…”

“Anything special we should keep in mind here?” Zorian said, cutting the simulacrum off before he

could get going. He knew himself – once he started complaining, there would be no end of it.

“Yeah, the wildlife is absolutely terrifying,” the simulacrum said. “At one point I saw ants the size of

my thumb dismembering some kind of jungle cat, and some of the snakes can fly. No wings or

anything, they just kind of silently float through the air like they were swimming through water. And

that was in the first hour or so.”

“Yeah, I heard the southern jungles make the Great Northern Wilderness look like a playground,”

Zach said, picking up a dried branch off the jungle floor and taking a few experimental swings with it.

“Not sure how much of that is true and how much of it is just southerners trying to make themselves

look tough, but there is probably some truth to it. If nothing else these jungles should be more

unpredictable than our forests, since the wildlife is more diverse here.”

“I was also told by the natives that foreigners often get sick not long after coming here,” the

simulacrum said. “It’s not a single disease either – there is a whole bunch of things you could

contract here. Most of them aren’t lethal, but they can leave you bedridden for weeks. Not a problem

for a simulacrum like me, but you’re going to have to stock up on cures before you start wandering

around the region.”

“Great,” Zorian clacked his tongue unhappily. “Another thing to worry about.”

“Hey,” Zach said suddenly. “Don’t get mad at me, but… didn’t you say your eldest brother is active

around here?”

“Yes?” Zorian said, drawing the word out unnecessarily. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Well,” Zach began carefully, “I know you don’t like him, but we’re kind of total strangers here. We

don’t know the language, we don’t know the culture, and we don’t know how to navigate the local

authorities. Your brother, on the other hand, probably does. And he probably has existing contacts

all over the place that he could refer us to…”

Zorian made a really sour face at that. Yeah, he could see the logic in that. Especially since they

were on a treasure hunt and his brother was… well, a treasure hunter. He probably could help. And,

as much as Zorian hated to admit it, probably would be willing to help.

But he so, so, didn’t want to ask Daimen for help…

“We don’t have time for that right now,” Zorian said curtly. “The restart is ending soon.”

Zach chuckled in amusement.

“But you agree that we should see him?” Zach asked, face full of mirth. “I say, I didn’t think it would

be that easy.”

“It’s a matter of survival,” Zorian’s simulacrum grumbled. “We can’t let our personal grudges get in

the way of that. In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing.”

Well put, simulacrum number 2. Well put.

“That’s good,” Zach said. “You know, I’m really looking forward to meeting the guy. Maybe punch

him in the face if he’s as bad as you obviously think he is…”

Zorian and his simulacrum shared an exasperated look between themselves. Still, he couldn’t deny

that a part of him was interested in seeing how a meeting between Zach and Daimen would go. He

hoped that Daimen still had that competitive streak and challenged Zach to a sparring match or

something – watching Zach wipe the floor with him would be pretty damn satisfying. Not as satisfying

as Zorian doing so himself, of course, but pretty close. Plus, he would be lying if he said he wasn’t

interested in what exactly his brother had been doing down here in the south that occupied him so.

And why were his parents coming here to meet with him, anyway?

Hmm…

Perhaps, before he sought out Daimen here in Koth, he should have a chat with mother at the start

of the next restart.

If nothing else, that way he wouldn’t have to search for him all over Koth.

- break -

The people guarding the Ibasan gate beneath Cyoria were a cranky and unhappy bunch. In theory,

their task was one of great importance – they were guarding the Ibasan route of retreat, making sure

no Eldemarian battle force could close the gate, or even pass to the other side to wreak havoc on

the base of Sudomir, their ally. In practice, this was seen as punishment duty. Having been stationed

here, they were denied a piece of the action happening above, and thus the glory and looting

opportunities that came with it. Besides, what were the chances that the beleaguered Cyorian

defenders could not only afford to send some of their battle mages down here, but that they also

knew exactly where to go in order to find the Ibasan gate site? No, the idea was absolutely ri-

“Hook goblins!” someone shouted. “We have hook goblins incoming!”

No one was worried at first. Hook goblins were ferocious and very deadly if one allowed them to get

close, but they weren’t particularly tough and went down easily before concentrated spellfire. Indeed,

the first wave was nothing special, lulling the Ibasan defenders into a false sense of safety. But as

they killed one wave of hook goblins, then two, and then another, they realized this swarm of them

was a bit larger than they were used to. Then a couple of mages got a strange headache at the most

inconvenient of times and failed their spells, and some of the hook goblins managed to close into

melee range…

The defenders dissolved into chaos. The troops manning the defenses may have thought the

attitude unfair, but there was a reason why the Ibasan leadership considered most of them to be the

dregs of their invasion force.

The commanders of the force delayed asking for help as long as possible, afraid of what their

superiors would say if they proved unable to contain even a simple hook goblin incursion. What a

humiliation that would be!

That changed when an entire regiment of steel golems came running into the gate chamber,

following behind the last hook goblins. Each of them carried a rifle and a belt full of spell bombs, and

they were far more resilient than mere hook goblins.

More importantly, they signified a clear Eldemarian attack on the gate chamber. This was no longer

just an unlucky incursion of Dungeon denizens but an organized assault. In fact, most of the Ibasans

suddenly realized that the hook goblins were probably just a setup to soften them up before the real

assault force arrived!

At this point the Ibasan defenders abandoned their pride and tried to contact the small elite Quatach-

Ichl had left by the dimensional gate itself. If this was an Eldemarian attack, then there was no

shame in summoning Quatach-Ichl to save them…

Unfortunately, Zach had already taken care of the gate battlegroup by then, freezing the war trolls

into icy statues and disabling the mages. No one would be coming to save them. The final nail in the

coffin was when Zach and Zorian stopped hiding and joined the golems and hook goblins in finishing

off the Ibasans.

The force arrayed before the Ibasan defenders was so overwhelming that many of them surrendered

rather than keep fighting till the bitter end. This was a bit of an unforeseen problem, as neither Zach

nor Zorian had the heart to just massacre people who surrendered in cold blood, but they also didn’t

trust them not to start something while they were distracted. After some heated discussion, they

ended up solving that by using sleeping gas bombs on them until they were all knocked

unconscious.

They were just finished with that when a small metal plate hanging off Zorian’s hip suddenly shook

and Alanic’s voice emanated from it, faint but crisp and perfectly audible.

“This is Alanic, code Tharo eight seven four. You should be done by now. Is the chamber clear?”

“This is Zorian, code Raha one one eight,” said Zorian back into the plate. He personally thought it

was kind of unnecessary, but Alanic insisted that these codes were used every time they made

contact with one another through the communication plate. “Everything is clear on my end. You can

bring everyone into the gate chamber.”

Five minutes later, a seemingly endless stream of people poured into the former Ibasan base, led by

Xvim and Alanic. Some of them were soldiers and battle mages, here to ensure the safety of the

gathered people from the Dungeon denizens, but most of them were various artificers, scholars,

dimensionalism experts, spell crafters, and so forth. They were all led into the center of the chamber

and presented with the Ibasan gate.

They all gathered around the gate, scrutinizing it intently… some with obvious enthusiasm and some

with professional stoicism.

“Alright everyone,” Xvim told them. “We have only a few hours to figure this thing out as much as

possible, so do your best. Mister Kazinski and mister Noveda here are the leaders of this project, so

please report all your findings to them. Don’t be fooled by their young age, they very much have the

confidence of the authorities in this matter.”

And thus, almost a hundred respected experts gathered from all over Eldemar set about studying the

Ibasan gate and how it could be recreated.

Chapter 066

Marred Perfection

For nearly six years now, Zorian had been living in this endlessly repeating month. It felt longer, to

be honest. So many things had happened, and his worldview had undergone such radical changes,

that he felt it would only be right if the whole thing had taken place over a decade or more. It made

him wonder how the original Zach would compare to the boy he had come to know – they seemed

vaguely similar at first glance, but those were no doubt just surface similarities. There was no way

that Zach had stayed the same over several decades, Zorian just hadn’t known the boy all that well

before the time loop and thus couldn’t spot the differences.

Nevertheless, Zorian had spent a bit over half a decade in the time loop, and in all that time he had

never really sat down with his mother to have a chat about things. Some people would have been

very ashamed about this, but not Zorian. Indeed, he felt that one of the really nice things about the

time loop was that he could virtually eliminate his interaction with his parents.

Now, for the first time in years, he was going to strike up a conversation with Mother… and it would

be about Daimen.

He hadn’t thought he’d ever want his parents to talk more about his older brother, but life was funny

like that sometimes.

“Actually, this reminds me of something,” Mother said. “Your father and I are going to Koth to visit

Daimen.”

Oh good. He’d been waiting for her to mention their trip to Koth. Thankfully, this wasn’t something he

had to steer the conversation to – despite her choice of words, the topic was clearly at the forefront

of her mind. She found a way to bring it up in every single restart.

“Well that’s a little sudden,” Zorian commented lightly. “What brought this up?”

If his mother was surprised by him showing actual interest in family matters, she didn’t show it.

“It’s only proper for us to visit Daimen from time to time,” she said in a lecturing tone. “It has been

nearly a year since we’ve last seen each other. Family ties are important.”

“Uh huh,” Zorian said in a patronizing tone. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for Daimen to

visit you instead? Seems that would be way easier than you travelling all the way to Koth.”

“Well,” she said, pausing a little. “You’re probably right about that. But you know how driven Daimen

is. He’s been really fired up about whatever he’s been looking for. There is no way he’d take a break

right now, not even to visit his family.”

“I see,” said Zorian. The old, bitter part of him knew that they would never have been so

understanding if he had tried to do the same. No, had he ignored his family for nearly a year, missing

all the family dinners and such, he would have never heard the end of it. But that wasn’t helpful right

now, so he pushed such thoughts away and focused on something else. “Since he won’t come to

you, you’ll come to him. Fair enough. Although, if this is a family meeting, how come you aren’t

making the rest of us take the trip with you? It’s not much of a family reunion if more than half of it

isn’t even there.”

“How do you know we aren’t making you come with us?” she asked curiously.

Zorian paused for a moment. Crap… she hadn’t actually mentioned that part yet, did she? Oh well,

this was pretty easy to salvage…

“What, you’re going to stop me from going to the academy at the very last moment?” Zorian asked

her with a raised eyebrow. “Or Fortov? Or drag Kirielle around a completely alien country where she

is liable to pick up ten different exotic diseases in a matter of days?”

“Actually, it’s good that you’ve reminded me about Kirielle-” she began, only for him to cut her off

almost immediately.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

She blinked in surprise, momentarily stunned into silence.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“You wanted to ask me if I would take Kirielle with me to Cyoria, right?” Zorian ‘guessed’. “I imagine

this was why you even brought this topic up in the first place. I’ll do it. I’ll take her with me to Cyoria.”

“Yesss!” Kirielle yelled, cunningly hidden just out of sight so she could eavesdrop on their

conversation.

Zorian rolled his eyes at her outburst and even Mother felt the need to direct an exasperated look in

Kirielle’s direction. Not that the little imp saw it – she was still hiding and pretending she wasn’t

spying on them.

“That was surprisingly easy,” Mother commented, shifting her attention back to him. “I know Kirielle

has been a little difficult lately. I’m glad you can see beyond that.”

“Yes, well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can go back to discussing your actual

reasons for rushing to Koth so suddenly,” Zorian said.

Mother gave him an appraising look.

“Why do you care about this so much?” she asked. “Not that I’m complaining about you taking

interest in family matters. In fact, I think it’s a positive thing. However, you can’t deny that this is

somewhat unlike you.”

“And you can’t deny this trip is somewhat unusual,” Zorian immediately shot back. “You’re leaving

Kirielle in my hands for at least two months and probably more, which you probably don’t like at

all…”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” she interjected.

“…and you’re leaving your company without proper leadership in the middle of the summer, which

I’m sure is driving father more than a little crazy,” finished Zorian, ignoring her comment.

It wasn’t that their business couldn’t survive without them for a few months. The company his

parents had built was long past the phase where they needed to get personally involved in every

little detail or business deal – so long as no crisis popped up, they could easily leave the whole thing

to their subordinates for a couple of months. But what if there was a crisis? There was no way his

parents were not thinking about this and worrying. Especially father, who seemed to think most of his

workers were either lazy or incompetent. That is, if Zorian had interpreted his father’s random

grumbling correctly over the years.

“Your father has indeed been a little hesitant to leave the company to its own devices for so long,”

Mother admitted. “But it’s…”

She hesitated, visibly considering whether to tell him the truth or not. Not for the first time, Zorian

wondered if he should just use his mental powers and read her thoughts. He really didn’t want to.

Even though they didn’t get along very well, there was just something very amoral about intruding on

his mother’s thoughts like that.

“It’s what?” he asked slowly.

“You’re very pushy today,” she remarked, an unhappy frown on her face.

“You keep criticizing me for not thinking about the family and our reputation,” Zorian said, not able to

keep a flash of annoyance out of his voice. “Yet now that you clearly have some kind of family

emergency on your hands, you are keeping me in the dark about it. I think I have the right to be a

little rude.”

“It’s not a family emergency,” she said, rubbing her forehead in frustration. “Not like you’re thinking,

anyway. It’s just…”

She sighed, deeply and heavily, like she was carrying some kind of great weight on her shoulders.

“Can you cast some of those privacy wards that prevent sound from leaving the area? This is not

something that I want Kirielle to hear.”

Zorian nodded and promptly erected a two-layer barrier – one to block out sound from leaving the

room and the other to prevent anyone from stepping foot in it without exerting a considerable amount

of physical force. Just in case Kirielle decided to be a bit bolder than usual.

“It’s done,” Zorian told Mother. “Now what’s this about?”

“Daimen is getting married,” she finally admitted.

Zorian stared at her for a second, trying to process that. What? That was the big secret?

Okay, so he could understand why his parents would consider this to be big news. However, he

expected them to be… well, happier about it. The way mother behaved, he would have thought that

somebody had died, not that a wedding had been announced.

“I don’t understand,” Zorian admitted after a few seconds. “Why is this such a bad thing? If I

remember correctly, you even made some pointed noises to him that he wasn’t that young anymore

and that he should think about settling down. Is there something wrong with the fiancée?”

“The girl is fine,” Mother sighed. “She’s from a powerful family of mages that are movers and

shakers in their state. She’s basically local nobility.”

“So he’s marrying into nobility, then?” Zorian asked. “Funny, I would have expected you to be

ecstatic about that.”

Mother gave him a rather unamused look.

“No? You don’t like the fact that he’s marrying into nobility?” Zorian asked, baffled. He honestly didn’t

understand why Mother disapproved of this so much. This sounded like something she’d be thrilled

about.

“It isn’t a good thing that she’s local nobility. That only makes things worse,” Mother explained. “Bad

enough that he wants to marry some distant foreigner when there are so many perfectly good local

girls he could go for. Daughters of influential families that would be happy to forge ties with us in

exchange for getting a genius mage of his caliber into their fold. But nevermind that. I could stomach

this if this was just random girl he picked up in Koth and brought home. But this girl… she’s

practically a princess. There is absolutely no way she would agree to move here to Altazia with

Daimen. Instead, it will be him staying in Koth with her.”

“Ahh…” Zorian said, finally understanding what the issue was. If Daimen married this girl and

remained permanently in Koth, his parents would gain nothing from this. Even though he would be

marrying into nobility, it would be very distant, foreign nobility. That would only give his parents some

mild bragging rights, but none of the practical benefits that marrying some influential family in

Eldemar (or at least in a country on the same continent) would.

Plus, if Daimen remained in Koth, his parents would only ever see their favorite son (and his new

family) once in a blue moon. The distance between Koth and Eldemar was not something casually

crossed.

“So,” Zorian said. “I’m guessing you’ve already tried to talk him out of this through your letters?”

“Yes,” Mother said. “We wrote to him at length as to why this is a poor idea. No matter how amazing

he thinks this girl is, he could do so much better here in Eldemar.”

“But Daimen didn’t listen to you?” Zorian surmised, not without some schadenfreude at their

predicament.

“He said he loves her,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “He won’t budge an inch on the matter. He

won’t even delay the marriage, much less cancel it. Keeps insisting she’s perfect and that he can’t

let the opportunity slip away. It’s too sudden! Why won’t he listen to me!?”

Zorian clacked his tongue. He didn’t know why she was so surprised. Love always made people

unreasonable, and Daimen had had his parents doting on him for as long as Zorian could remember.

Why would he give up what was apparently the love of his life just because his parents didn’t

approve?

That said – and Zorian couldn’t believe he was thinking this – he actually agreed with Daimen here.

What right did their parents have to get in between him and his new fiancée? It was ultimately his

decision to make.

Though admittedly, it was also his parents’ right to drop everything and go all the way to Koth to try

and convince him otherwise in person.

“I suppose you think that going there and trying to convince him face-to-face will be more effective

than letters,” Zorian surmised.

“You can never be as convincing in a letter as you can when being physically there in front of

someone,” Mother said. “But I don’t know whether that will be enough, that’s all. We still have to try. I

know he’s young and in love, but he’s making a big mistake and he needs to know that.”

“Hmm,” Zorian hummed. “Alright. I’m not going to get involved with this and I’m sure you don’t

expect me to. Thank you for explaining things, at least.”

“Don’t spread this around,” she warned. “I’m telling you this because I know you can keep a secret.

There is still a chance we can set this right.”

“Alright,” agreed Zorian easily. “Quick question, then. Do you know what Daimen has been working

on in Koth and where he is right now?”

“No, he was always very secretive about that. He was worried someone would intercept his letters

and beat him to his prize. The world of treasure hunters is very competitive, from what I hear. We

agreed he would come and pick us up in Jasuka once we arrived there.”

Zorian nodded. About what he expected, really. It made sense for his parents to arrive in Jasuka,

since the city was the main entrance port for ships entering the Koth region from the north, and it

made sense for Daimen to go and meet them there. Sadly, this meeting was too late for Zorian’s

purposes, so he needed some clue with which he could track his eldest brother down.

Like, say, the identity of this fiancée of his.

“Do you know the name of this girl he wants to marry?” Zorian asked. “Or maybe the name of this

noble family of theirs and which country it is from? I’m curious.”

“Her name is Orissa Siqi Taramatula, of the Taramatula family,” Mother said. “They are from the

state of Haramao, wherever that is. Supposedly they’re very distinctive, because their family magic

is based around these… magical bees that they cultivate.”

“Bees?” Zorian asked curiously.

“Yes. They breed several species of magical bees and use their secret family magic to control and

direct them. They’re supposedly very versatile,” Mother explained. “They produce some sort of

extremely valuable honey, they can be deadly in battle and they’re very good at tracking things

down. It’s this last thing that led Daimen to contact them. He hired their best trackers for his mission,

and the daughter of the family head came along with the group. One thing led to another and, well…

now we have this situation on our hands. Hopefully her family is as unenthusiastic about this as we

are and we can get their help with this.”

Ha. It would seem that Daimen was finally going to learn how unpleasant their parents could really

be when they disapproved of their children’s choices.

In any case, this was probably already enough information to track down Daimen – this Taramatula

family sounded like they would be trivially easy to locate, and they probably knew where Daimen

was. Still, it might not hurt to see if he could get anything else out of mother – maybe Daimen let

something important slip through in his letters.

He opened his mouth to ask another question, only to get interrupted by a knock at the door.

Oh right. Ilsa was here to talk to him.

Mother motioned for him to go open the door, and Zorian obliged her. Continuing the conversation

would have to wait until he dealt with the academy representative.

- break -

Xvim’s home was currently host to a very unusual group. Zorian, Zach, Xvim, Alanic, Kael and

Taiven were all gathered in Xvim’s living room, poring over the various documents Zach and Zorian

had collected over the restarts. Everyone who was aware of the time loop was there. Zorian would

have normally left Kael and Taiven out of this meeting – Kael because he had told him to keep

secrets from him in subsequent restarts and Taiven because she never fully believed in the time

loop anyway – but Xvim and Alanic insisted that they should be involved with things this time. This

wasn’t something Xvim and Alanic usually did, but Zorian had come to expect these kinds of sudden

requests from them lately. Ever since they had started leaving messages and research notes to their

future selves via Zorian, their actions tended to vary a lot from restart to restart.

Zorian saw no reason to refuse the request, so Kael and Taiven got to join them this time.

Unlike everyone else, Zorian didn’t bother reading any of the documents. There was no need to. He

was, after all, the one who had taken all the various notes and records and turned them into the

relatively concise reports they were currently reading. Well, he and his simulacrums, anyway – he

tended to delegate this kind of work to his copies these days. He just had to remember to read

through their finished work at least once or else they would try to sneak things in as a form of silent

protest against being given boring chores to do. But really, what did he have them for if not so he

could delegate the boring, time-consuming stuff to them?

“Well, that is good news, about the Ibasan gate,” Zach said, leafing through the information they

gathered on the structure in the previous restart. “I was all but sure that Quatach-Ichl had stuck a

human soul somewhere in there to make the gate. I mean, even the Bakora gates require some sort

of spirit to function like they do.”

“Bakora gates open portals all on their own, though,” Zorian said. “The Ibasan gates don’t. They just

keep a portal someone else created open indefinitely.”

“Yes, it’s hard to see what a soul in there would do, except maybe provide a power source,” Alanic

spoke up. “It’s not like sticking any random soul in there would allow it to open dimensional

passages on its own. I guess if you added a soul of a willing mage in there, like Sudomir did with his

wife-”

Kael made a very sour face at the reminder about that. He didn’t have a very high opinion of

Sudomir’s ‘act of love’ and flat out said so earlier. It didn’t help that Sudomir had pretty much hunted

down all of Kael’s friends and would have likely done the same to the boy if he hadn’t been scouted

out by the academy by then.

“-then maybe you could improve the efficiency of the structure or something,” Alanic finished.

“Otherwise, there would be little point to it.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining,” Zach said. “I mean, if the Ibasan gate is just a spell

stabilization frame made out of exotic materials and spell formula, that means we can copy their

design easily enough, right? Zorian?”

“I’m not sure something this intricate and advanced deserves to be called ‘just’ anything,” Zorian

remarked. “As for recreating it… well, if it were just you and me working on this, I’d say it would take

us years to figure out how to reproduce it. But since we’ll be using the whole ‘army of experts’

approach we used in the previous restart… it will still take at least a year, but probably not more than

one.”

“Still a year?” Zach whined, visibly disappointed. “Why?”

“The short time during which we have access to the gate is really hampering us,” Zorian explained,

clacking his tongue unhappily. “We may have an army of experts, but they only have a couple of

hours before the end of the restart to examine the gate. There is only so much they can do in such a

short time.”

“Why not just attack the base before the end of the restart?” Taiven asked. “Is this Quatach-Ichl

really that unbeatable?”

“Yes,” Zach and Zorian answered in unison.

“Okay, okay, no need to pile up on me,” she grumbled. “And is there no time during which he’s

absent from Cyoria or something?”

Zorian was just about to explain why that wouldn’t work when he remembered something. He

reached for a nearby stack of papers and started quickly leafing through a timeline of the invasion he

and Zach had painstakingly made. A definitive timeline was, of course, completely impossible –

things changed often, depending on what Zach and Zorian did in any particular restart. However,

certain things seemed very resistant to change, and virtually always happened on schedule if they

didn’t specifically try to disrupt them. He was sure he remembered something about… ah!

“Here,” Zorian said triumphantly, pointing at one of the paragraphs. “At the beginning of the third

week of the restart, Quatach-Ichl has a tendency to return to Ulquaan Ibasa and stay there for three

whole days. So long as we don’t disrupt the invasion too badly until then, he’s likely to do just that in

this restart too. Then, if we managed to seize the Ibasan base at the very start of this period, we will

have three whole days to study the gate without interruption.”

“That’s a big if,” Zach pointed out. “You’re talking about attacking the base while it’s fully staffed and

defended. Trust me, that’s very different than taking out those bunch of incompetents that loiter

around the base during the invasion itself. And you’re talking about doing it without giving them

enough time to raise the alarm and summon Quatach-Ichl back. Or get reinforcements from

Sudomir’s mansion, for that matter.”

“Yeah,” said Zorian thoughtfully. “Alanic’s soldiers alone aren’t going to cut it this time. We’re going

to need to hire aranean mercenaries if this is ever going to work. I’m pretty sure I can find a web that

would be interested if we offer enough payment.”

“And Sudomir?” Alanic asked.

“Oh, that one is easy,” Zorian said. “He’s still a mayor of Knyazov Dveri. We just create a big enough

disturbance in the town and wait for him to show up, as he surely must. Then we kill his bodyguards

and kidnap him in broad daylight.”

There was a brief silence as everyone gave him strange looks.

“What?” Zorian said defensively. “You’ve got a better idea?”

“You’ve become a scary person, Zorian,” Taiven remarked.

“Why kidnap?” Alanic asked. “Why not just assassinate him?”

“He cryptically hinted that he was very hard to kill when I spoke to him,” Zorian said. “I don’t know

what magic he used for that, but it’s possible that just killing him wouldn’t work. So I figured it was

safer to just put him to sleep and keep him that way for as long as necessary.”

“Well, I at least approve of this course of action,” Alanic said. “If nothing else, this will give me a

chance to interrogate Sudomir once he has been captured. I note we’ve never really done that

properly in any of the past restarts.”

“Yeah, it was never really a priority, and the man’s plans were all pretty crazy anyway,” Zorian

shrugged.

“Crazy or not, he clearly had plenty of talent in magic,” Kael said. “You shouldn’t just limit yourself to

questioning him about his crimes and links to Ulquaan Ibasa. You should interrogate him for

everything he knows about necromancy and other magic as well.”

Unsurprisingly, this made him the new target of everyone’s strange looks, much like Zorian had been

earlier.

“Look,” Kael said, trying to sound calm. “I probably hate this monster more than anyone in this room.

Chances are that a portion of his knowledge comes from the very people I knew. People he killed

and, in all probability, whose souls he interrogated for secrets. Magical and otherwise. But that’s

precisely why you should do the same to him! It’s…”

He struggled for a moment to find the right word.

“Just,” Alanic offered quietly.

“Appropriate,” Kael corrected. “It’s appropriate for him to suffer a similar fate. Fitting.”

It took another two hours for them to create a basic outline for a plan of attack on the Ibasan base.

The biggest surprise to Zorian was that Taiven wanted to participate in the fighting. Specifically, she

wanted to join the soldiers and battle mages that Alanic would be mustering for the operation. Alanic

provisionally agreed to this, though he told her he would throw her out of the battlegroup immediately

if she proved incapable of following the chain of command.

The tiny flinch she did after hearing that told Zorian that she’d likely had problems with that in the

past… but she agreed with his condition anyway.

In the end, the meeting was dismissed and everyone went their own way… except for Zorian, who

stayed behind to talk to Xvim about something.

“So,” Xvim began. “We’re alone, Mister Kazinski. What is it that you wanted to talk to me about that

you didn’t want the others to overhear?”

“First,” Zorian said, taking out a notebook out of his jacket pocket, “take a look at this.”

The notebook was, of course, the very list of people to interrogate for secrets that Xvim had given

him in one of the previous restarts. The one that had caused him so much self-doubt and worrying.

Xvim carefully started leafing through it, his frown deepening ever further as time went by. Zorian

patiently waited for him to finish, not saying a word.

“I suppose I’m the one who gave you this,” Xvim said, giving Zorian a questioning look. Zorian

nodded. “I see. Then… should I assume you’re here because you’ve already gone through the entire

list and now need more names?”

“No,” Zorian said, a little more forcefully than he intended. “No, I’ve done no such thing. I… I

managed to get a couple of people there to willingly teach me what they knew, despite your

assurances that they wouldn’t do that under any circumstances. I tried to convince the others to do

the same, but when they refused… I just moved on to other things. I haven’t invaded the mind of

anyone on that list. Well, aside from an occasional surface scan…”

Xvim stared first at Zorian, and then at the notebook in his hands, staying silent for a while. Finally,

he wordlessly handed the notebook back to Zorian.

“That,” Xvim decided, “is relieving to hear.”

Zorian blinked in surprise at the statement.

“I don’t know whether my past self would agree with me. Probably not, if he gave you that list,” Xvim

continued. “And I can definitely see the logic in giving you that list, even though I don’t like it. All that

said, I don’t understand what the purpose of this talk is. If you don’t need more names, why did you

show me that book?”

“I have decided I won’t be going after these people,” Zorian said. And what a load off his chest that

was, too. “Not the way you… not the way your past iteration had urged me to do.”

“Hm. I’m not sure whether to praise you for your ethics or berate you for being too soft to do what

has to be done,” Xvim grumbled, shaking his head slightly. “Then again, the way you phrased that

makes me think you still have some sort of designs for the list. I’m guessing that’s where I come in,

yes?”

“See, the idea is this – I want you to talk to these people and try to get their secrets yourself,” Zorian

told him bluntly. He paused for a moment. “And then share these secrets with me, of course.”

Xvim looked at him like he was stupid for a moment then let out a brief chuckle of amusement.

“Mister Kazinski,” Xvim told him, “if I could get these people to share their secrets with me like that,

don’t you think I would have already done so?”

“Not for all of them,” Zorian pointed out. “Some of them are clearly on the list because you

thought I might be interested in what they had to offer, but you probably don’t care for their

specialties. I doubt you even tried to trade for what they have to offer.”

“That much is true,” Xvim admitted.

“As for the rest… how much did you really offer them for their life’s work?” Zorian asked.

“I’m always fair in my dealings, mister Kazinski,” Xvim said with a frown.

“Yes, but what if you gave them an outrageous offer?” Zorian smiled. “The collected secrets of

dozens of mages. More money than they’d ever seen in their life. Rare materials that cannot be

obtained on the open market. A chance to hire a group of archmages for a task. That sort of thing.”

Xvim raised an eyebrow at him. “If you can offer all that, why do you need me?”

“See?” Zorian said, pointing straight at his face. “That reaction there. Disbelief and amusement. You

know I’m a time traveler, and you still can’t take me seriously when I say what I offer. How do you

think other people would react? Those kind of claims, when they come from me or Zach, really are

outrageous to people. And not in a good way. We’re just teenagers with no known accomplishments.

We only have borrowed fame from our families to fall back on, and that can only take you so far. You,

on the other hand, are a highly respected archmage. They know you. You’re friends and

acquaintances with some of them. It won’t be so ridiculous if you offer these things.”

“It will still sound rather ridiculous,” Xvim pointed out. “People will think I’ve gone mad. Well, more

than they already do, anyway.”

“Don’t worry, your reputation will be restored at the end of every restart,” Zorian told him.

“How very comforting,” Xvim deadpanned.

They were both silent for a while as Xvim considered the idea.

“There is some merit to it,” Xvim eventually admitted. “Some of these people… I don’t think there is

anything I could offer them to share their findings with me. Most, though, probably have their price, if

one were willing to go high enough, and the offer looked credible. And on that note, are you sure you

can really deliver what you offer? Take money, for example – I’m not sure you understand what kind

of sums are exchanged between high-level mages on deals like these. What sounds like an

outrageous sum to you might look like pocket change to them.”

Zorian didn’t try to explain. He simply reached into his pocket and handed Xvim a bank check he had

made for the occasion. Xvim glanced at it and immediately raised his eyebrows at the sum written on

the piece of paper.

“That’s a lot of zeroes,” Xvim said after a short pause.

“No, mister Chao,” Zorian said with a toothy smile. “That is just pocket change.”

- break -

The coming week was a relatively busy one, with many things happening. An invasion of the Ibasan

base beneath Cyoria was being organized, the Silent Doorway Adepts were being convinced that

time travel was real and that they should give them access to their Bakora gate and associated

experts again, some changes were being planned for their tour of Altazia’s various Black Rooms and

the plot to convince various experts to part with their closely-guarded secrets was slowly going

forward. Thankfully, it was no longer just Zorian working alone on all these things, as it once was, so

this kind of workload was easy enough to maintain.

That said, all of this was mostly irrelevant to simulacrum number two, whose job was simply to go to

school and then disappear at the end of the day. Strangely enough, number two didn’t mind his task.

He knew that his predecessors had been rather unenthusiastic about their task, but he personally

found it just to his liking. Maybe it was because the original had created him right after he had

finished another negotiation session with the Silent Doorway Adepts, but he felt this sort of relaxing

task was just what he needed.

Still, actually paying attention to classes was out of the question, so he picked up a couple of

advanced books to read during lectures and breaks.

It was during one of the breaks that he found Neolu watching over his shoulder curiously.

“What?” he asked. He was rather surprised, really – this wasn’t like in the previous restart, where the

earlier simulacrums ended up secretly befriending her during their short lives. He was sure of it. So

why exactly was she taking interest in him and his reading choices?

“Why are you reading dictionaries of Xlotic languages?” she asked curiously.

Oh. Right. Of course she would be interested in that. She was from Xlotic herself, after all.

He had found out a fair amount about Neolu in the previous restart, partially because Neolu herself

felt the need to tell him about herself and partially because he had needed to reconstruct what his

simulacrums had done by subtly questioning people and reading their thoughts. Neoluma-Manu

Iljatir (Neolu for short) was a daughter of a regular, but very wealthy house from Kontemar – one of

the bigger Ikosian successor states on the Xlotic coast. The darker, bronze-colored skin of hers

hinted at it, but that kind of complexion was also common in southern Altazia and the Shivan

archipelago, and thus not a dead giveaway. The blue, tattoo-like markings on her cheeks and

forehead were the signature trait of her house, and nobody knew if they were merely cosmetic or

held some kind of secret Iljatir family magic.

For Neolu to travel all the way from Xlotic to Eldemar in order to study magic was rather unusual, to

say the least. It wasn’t like Xlotic didn’t have plenty of prestigious academies of its own. It was once

the heartland of the Ikosian empire after all, and though the Cataclysm hurt the region badly, that still

counted for something. Nonetheless, Neolu’s father decided to send her all the way to Eldemar for

her magical education. Officially it was because Cyoria’s academy was the world’s most renowned

magical academy and he wanted nothing but the very best for his daughter, but rumor had it she had

been involved in some kind of scandal back home and he wanted her out of people’s sight for a

while. Sending her to a distant but prestigious magical academy was probably a good solution in his

book.

That was just a rumor, though, and even if Neolu was here in unofficial exile, one certainly couldn’t

tell that by her behavior. She seemed quite happy to be in Cyoria, and never gave the slightest

amount of indication that she was bitter about her family or home. It was possible that the rumors

were just rubbish in this case and that she had just really wanted to go to a foreign country for her

education and her father couldn’t bear to refuse her request.

Well, no matter. Not his business anyway. As for him reading Xlotic dictionaries, well… he was

actually trying to make himself somewhat useful by helping simulacrum number one, who was

steadily making his way to Koth right now. He had been in mental contact with his fellow simulacrum

for a while now, and while the dictionaries he was reading were kind of outdated, it was better than

nothing.

Of course, he couldn’t really tell that to Neolu.

“I was thinking of visiting Xlotic once I graduate from the academy,” he told her instead.

“Really!?” she gasped. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Trust me, it’s a beautiful place. You should visit my

place when you do – I can give you a tour of the city and tell you where to go if you want to see

something interesting.”

Hmm. Now that was an interesting idea. Didn’t Zach say that it was easy to convince Neolu that time

travel was real? Maybe they should recruit her as a guide when they went looking for the piece of

the key that was supposedly lost in Xlotic. She probably wouldn’t be able to help them too much, but

she could at least make sure they didn’t make any major social blunders and act as a translator for

them while they gathered their bearings. And maybe put in a good word for them to her House, so

they could hopefully tap into their contacts throughout the region.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Zorian said. “Say, do you think you could help me translate a few things? I

have this list of phrases that I got from my friend who has been to Xlotic, but I can’t seem to find

them in the books…”

- break -

Once Zorian’s simulacrum had finally reached Koth again, actually tracking down Daimen proved to

be quite easy. Admittedly, this was only because he had managed to get the identity of his fiancée

out of Mother. Turns out, Daimen was not quite as driven as Mother imagined him to be – instead of

ceaselessly pursuing whatever goal he came to Koth for, he was taking a bit of a break to spend

time with his girl at the Taramatula family estate. Well, considering he had been doing that for

several weeks now, ‘a bit’ was probably an understatement. Anyway. All Zorian had to do was talk to

a high-ranking member of the House, ask him where Daimen was, lift the information straight from

his mind when he claimed he didn’t know anything regarding the matter, and then make his way to

the place with Zach in tow.

Thus it was that the two of them found themselves waiting in front of the entrance to the Taramatula

estate, stubbornly insisting that they wanted to talk to Daimen and ignoring the guards who were

equally stubborn in claiming they’d never seen the man in their life.

In all honestly, Zorian was kind of amazed they hadn’t tried to violently get rid of them yet. He knew

that Houses back in Eldemar tended to be a bit trigger happy when faced with visitors who couldn’t

take the hint. Though if they did, Zach and Zorian were entirely capable and willing to take them

down and then keep doing the same to any reinforcements the House sent their way. Maybe they

could sense that somehow?

Eventually, a rather severe-looking middle aged woman in white-and-orange clothing arrived to see

what the disturbance was. She said her name was Ulanna, but she made no mention of what her

position in the House was and what sort of authority she was wielding.

“You say you are Daimen’s younger brother?” she asked with an arched eyebrow. Ulanna actually

spoke grammatically perfect Ikosian, unlike most people they found in Koth, though her accent was

pretty thick.

“Yes, Zorian Kazinski. You can show him this as proof,” said Zorian, handing her a rolled up painting

that he had shamelessly stolen from Daimen’s room back in Cirin. The painting depicted three

female students from Daimen’s year at the academy, scantily dressed and posing suggestively. He

had supposedly gotten that painting as a gift from the girls in question, and always kept it displayed

prominently in his room, ignoring Mother’s objection that it was ‘obscene’.

The woman slowly and dramatically unfurled the painting, stoically scrutinized the contents with a

raised eyebrow, and then gave him a mildly amused look.

“I see,” she said. “If nothing else, you seem to have a similar sense of humor as he does. I’ll be sure

to show this to him. I’m sure there is an interesting story behind it.”

“Oh absolutely,” Zorian said with a sunny grin. “I’m sure he’d love to tell you all about it.”

About fifteen minutes later, Ulanna returned with Daimen in tow.

It had been a while since Zorian had last seen his brother, but he hadn’t changed much in the

meantime. He was still the same tall, handsome guy with a muscular, athletic build and a confident

swagger. Zorian would recognize him just about anywhere.

Zorian had changed a lot since their last meeting, however. He had become good enough at magic

to notice that Daimen had discreetly cast a divination spell at him to confirm he really was Zorian and

not a disguised imposter. He had gotten good enough at his mental powers to immediately tell when

he was in the presence of another psychic individual.

He closed his eyes momentarily. Daimen was psychic. Of course. The one thing that Zorian was

somewhat special at, and Daimen had to have it too. To tell the truth, though, he had somewhat

been expecting it. It would certainly explain where that incredible social sense and persuasiveness

of his had come from – even as a child, Daimen could wade through social situations that even adult

men would struggle at. How good was Daimen at controlling his gift, though? Zorian felt an urge to

send a telepathic probe at him to check, but restrained himself. Maybe later. The situation was still a

little tense right now, no sense in making himself even more suspicious.

Also, if Daimen was Open and had some measure of control over it, then he should have very much

noticed that Zorian was like him. Why hadn’t he said anything to him or his parents?

Yeah, he definitely needed to confront him about this at some point.

“Zorian?” Daimen said. “Is that really you?”

“Who else could I be?” Zorian shot back. “I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, but have

you really forgotten what your little brother looked like already?”

Daimen laughed awkwardly. “No, of course not. It’s just that this is very unexpected. Shouldn’t you

be in school or something?”

“I should,” Zorian admitted. “But I decided to take a trip to Koth instead. Then I remembered you’re

already here and thought it would only be polite to drop by and say hi.”

“Uh huh,” Daimen said. He gave him a measuring look. “Tell me honestly – are you here on our

parents’ behalf?”

“No,” Zorian said, shaking his head.

“So you’re not going to try and get in between me and Orissa?” he asked.

“No, why would I?” said Zorian. “I’m happy for you. You’re on your own when it comes to dealing

with Mother and Father, though.”

“You little brat,” Daimen growled. “Then why the hell did you pick that of all things as your proof of

identity, hmm?”

“It was a lovely painting,” Ulanna commented stoically beside him. “You must have been very

popular in your school days, mister Kazinski.”

Daimen ignored her comment in favor of focusing on Zorian.

“It sure seems like you’re trying to get me in trouble here, is what I’m saying,” he told Zorian.

“All I know about how to properly treat a brother I learned from you, brother dearest,” Zorian said

with a sickly smile.

“Oh?” Ulanna asked. “It sounds like you have some fascinating stories.”

“Yeah, there are some nice ones,” Zorian said. “My personal favorite is when he thought it would be

funny to constantly lock his little brother out of the house for hours on end.”

“Actually I just wanted the house all for myself, and you didn’t want to go out and play outside like a

normal kid,” Daimen pointed out. “Besides, I actually paid a price for that one.”

“Yes, that’s why I said it was my personal favorite,” Zorian said.

“What exactly happened?” Zach asked, causing Daimen and Ulanna to truly focus on him for the first

time since the conversation started. He had been uncharacteristically quiet up until this moment, just

observing the interaction from the sidelines and not saying anything.

“Zorian learned how to pick locks just so he could enter the house again, that’s what,” Daimen

explained with annoyance. “I mean, what kind of kid does that? And then some stupid police officer

that had no idea he was trying to break into his own house sees him and arrests him for burglary.

Man, was Mother pissed about that when she found out. At both of us, really, but especially me since

I was older and was supposed to be watching him instead of chasing him out of the house to do my

own thing.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Ulanna commented.

“Yeah, yeah, I was a bit of a brat as a kid,” Daimen said dismissively. “Who wasn’t? Anyway, come

inside, you two. I must say, it’s pretty impressive that you were able to travel all the way here from

Eldemar…”

“Pretty irresponsible too,” Ulanna added from beside him.

“Well yeah, but I’m the last person who can lecture people about that,” Daimen said. “Man,

compared to some of the stuff I did when I was their age, this is nothing!”

Ulanna raised an eyebrow at him.

“Err,” fumbled Daimen, before rounding back at Zach and Zorian. “And what the hell are you two

waiting for? A written invitation? Get inside already before I dig myself an even deeper hole! I swear,

this just isn’t my day…”

With that, Daimen turned towards the actual building of the estate and marched towards it, trusting

them to follow after him. With a careless shrug and a smile at a job well done, Zorian followed after

him.

Chapter 067

Convergence

Zorian had to admit he was somewhat surprised at the way the Taramatula family treated him and

Zach. They clearly knew about Daimen’s family not approving of his relationship with Orissa, and the

two of them made a spectacle of themselves upon arrival too. Zorian fully expected them to be wary

of them, even unfriendly. Instead, the moment Daimen had confirmed Zorian was really who he said

he was, they treated them both like honored guests. They summoned what must have been half of

the whole extended family to greet them, introduced them to many of these people personally, gave

them a brief tour of the place and offered to get Zorian something to drink at least three times before

they accepted that he wasn’t thirsty.

That kind of reception made Zorian more than a little uncomfortable. He knew they were just being

polite, and that all these smiles and pleasantries weren’t very genuine, but he simply wasn’t used to

that kind of treatment. It didn’t help that very few of the Taramatula spoke Ikosian, which made it

hard for Zorian to make himself understood. He only knew a few words in the local language, most

of which were colorful local curses that his simulacrum had felt the need to include in his report for

some reason, but people around him insisted on trying to talk to him anyway.

Normally, this would be Zorian’s clue to start peering into people’s surface thoughts in order to

decipher what they wanted from him. This wouldn’t totally solve the problem of differing languages,

since people’s thoughts were in no way completely divorced from the language they spoke, but it

would help. However, being too liberal with mind magic in a gathering of mages was a recipe for

disaster. The risk of discovery was too high. This was especially true because the Taramatula were

bee controllers, which probably meant they specialized in some form of mind magic to begin with.

Someone in the Taramatula family didn’t feel the same way about him, though, because he just felt a

telepathic probe smashing against his defenses.

Zorian, who was just in the middle of answering one of Ulanna’s questions, immediately stopped

talking and turned towards the source of the probe. The mind magic had been crude and unsubtle,

allowing Zorian to zero in on the person responsible almost immediately. It was a young teenage girl,

who was currently doing her best to look innocent and doing a terrible job of it.

“Is something wrong?” Ulanna asked with a frown, following Zorian’s gaze and scrutinizing the girl

with interest.

“No, nothing,” said Zorian, shaking his head and turning back towards her. “I must have imagined

things.”

He didn’t want to raise a fuss over this. It would be his word against hers, and it would probably be

seen as petty and oversensitive to make a big deal over the whole thing, even if they believed him.

Besides, the probe had been more amusing than threatening. The girl was terrible. He could fight off

that level of attack in his sleep.

He did kind of wonder if this was something the Taramatula leadership instructed the girl to do, or if it

was something she decided on her own initiative. On one hand, Zorian found it hard to believe that

the Taramatula would entrust a task like this to someone this unqualified. On the other hand, this

way they could escape consequences if they were caught much more easily. They could always

claim it’s just a kid being stupid and ask for leniency in light of that fact.

After a moment of consideration, he casually sent a telepathic probe of his own at the girl, wormed

his way past her flimsy mental defenses and hit her with a weak mental shock as a friendly warning

not to try that stuff again in the future. It was just a tiny little jolt, probably didn’t even hurt, but she

reeled back as if slapped and quickly found a way to excuse herself from the meeting.

Zorian sniffed disdainfully. What a baby.

Ulanna frowned at the scene but didn’t say anything. He was pretty sure that she, at the very least,

was ignorant of what the girl had tried to pull on him.

Eventually they were introduced to Orissa as well, the woman that Daimen was apparently so in love

with. She was a tall, shapely woman, confident in her posture and movement. Very dark skinned, as

was typical of all people of Koth. Beautiful, but so were all women that Daimen went for. She was

one of the more reserved Taramatula they were introduced to, though Zorian couldn’t tell if that was

because she was usually like this or if she was simply leery about them in particular.

Overall, Zorian couldn’t really see anything special about her. Nothing that would explain, at first

glance, how she managed to capture Daimen’s heart so firmly. Skill, maybe? According to Ulanna

(who was, as it turned out, Orissa’s aunt), Orissa was one of the more capable Taramatula

members.

“Your brother has good taste,” Zach whispered to him, tracing a vague hourglass figure in the air.

“You know nothing about her except that she’s good looking and that she can behave herself in

public,” Zorian pointed out. “How is that ‘good taste’?”

“With those looks, what more do you want?” Zach asked him, grinning.

“I can’t believe I’m defending Daimen here, but I’m sure it’s not that shallow,” Zorian said. “Daimen

had plenty of beautiful girls throwing themselves at him in the past and he never thought to marry

them. I’m sure there is more to her than just looks.”

“I’m sure the looks helped,” Zach said.

“Oh, definitely,” Zorian agreed to that. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Daimen go for a girl that wasn’t

beautiful. It’s just that I don’t think she could have won him over by beauty alone.”

As if sensing that the two of them were talking about him, Daimen soon extricated himself from the

main mass of people and sought them out.

“What are you two doing, whispering to each other on the sidelines?” he asked, approaching them.

“Don’t you know that’s rude, especially when you’re the guests of honor for the occasion?”

“We don’t even speak their language,” Zorian pointed out. “Kind of makes it hard to mingle.”

“Well you certainly won’t learn if you don’t interact with people,” Daimen said.

Zorian frowned, a flash of annoyance rippling through him.

“Did you come here just to lecture me?” Zorian asked him, an edge of warning in his voice.

“Still so prickly,” Daimen sighed. “Look, since you’re not really interacting with anyone, why don’t we

go somewhere private and have a nice friendly chat.”

He looked at Zach with a speculative look. In response, Zach smiled broadly at him and gave him a

stupid little wave, like this was the first time they saw each other.

“Right,” Daimen said, looking mildly amused. “I guess you want your friend to join us, then?”

“That’s right,” Zorian said. “He followed me all the way to Koth, it would be a jerk move of me to

simply sideline him now that I’m here.”

“Sure, I guess,” Daimen said with a shrug, motioning for them to follow him. “He’s not your boyfriend,

is he?”

Zorian scowled, resisting an urge to fire a lightning bolt at him.

Zach, on the other hand, was a little less restrained and launched a kick in Daimen’s direction. A kick

which Daimen easily dodged, Zorian was sad to note.

“Oh don’t be so touchy, you two, it was just a little joke,” Daimen said, waving his hands placatingly

in front of him. “You two should know all about little jokes, what with the stupid prank you pulled on

me when you arrived. Right?”

Zorian clacked his tongue unhappily. Okay, so he kind of got them there.

Daimen led them across the estate towards the little guest house near the northern edge of the

complex, taking care to make a big arc around the building where Taramatula bee hives were

housed.

“You don’t want to go near there,” Daimen warned. “The Taramatula keep multiple types of bees,

and the combat ones tend to be pretty aggressive around strangers. Your scent is new, so you

getting too close would probably send them into a frenzy. The keepers would calm them down, but

still. Very scary, seeing a huge cloud of magical killer bees descending towards you.”

“Speaking from experience, I take it?” Zach asked.

“Yeah, they didn’t like me either, at first,” Daimen confirmed. “I have no idea why the Taramatula

didn’t tell me to watch out for that when I first moved in, but I suspect it was some sort of hazing

thing. They wanted to see how I would react to being put in that situation, I guess.”

“Are you sure they weren’t just bitter their daughter chose to marry some foreign commoner and

wanted to scare you off?” Zorian asked curiously.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure they’re pleased with her choice,” Daimen said, sounding completely

unconcerned. “The local politics still makes my head spin every time I try to understand it, but the

Taramatula have thoroughly solidified their position in the local scene. What they want most right

now is powerful mages on their side, and… well, I don’t want to brag too much, but I’m kind of

amazing.”

“The only amazing thing about you is your ego,” Zorian muttered under his breath.

Daimen either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore the comment.

“Well, I’ll be honest with you and admit they would have preferred if I married one of their… less

prominent family members,” Daimen said. “Someone who wasn’t so close to the main branch of the

family. But I made it clear to them right away that this wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t after Orissa’s

hand because I coveted their status and influence, I was after her because I loved her. It was either

Orissa or nothing.”

Zorian considered asking Daimen what exactly was so amazing about Orissa, but decided he didn’t

actually care about the answer that much and stayed silent.

Eventually, they reached their destination – a humble little building that looked like somewhat

disrespectful accommodations for a person who was soon to marry into the Taramatula family.

However, Zorian knew from talking to Ulanna that this wasn’t the actual housing the Taramatula

assigned to Daimen. He had a spacious room in the central building, one much more fitting for

someone like him, it was just that he mostly chose not to use it. He spent most of his time here, in

this out-of-the-way guest building, which had been assigned to him as his own private workshop

after he complained that his assigned room wasn’t secure enough to do his work in.

Daimen ushered them inside the building, which was overflowing with maps, strange devices and

what appeared to be old artifacts recovered from gods know where.

“Don’t touch anything,” Daimen warned them. “I’ll kill you if you break something.”

Zorian knew it was just a stupid expression, but he couldn’t help but imagine Daimen actually trying

to kill the two of them and eventually realizing what he had gotten himself into. It put a sunny smile

on his face. Oh how glorious that would be...

“I don’t like that smile,” Daimen noted. “Seriously Zorian, don’t touch anything. This is work related.”

“I’m just messing with you,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “We’ll leave your things alone, no need to

worry. How is your expedition faring, anyway?”

Daimen collapsed on his chair with a long suffering sigh, snatching a clay figurine of a bearded man

off the table and staring at it for a few seconds.

“It’s… going,” he said, eventually. Very informative. “I’m close to finding it, I know I am, but I just

can’t seem to zero in on the actual location. I don’t understand. We combed through the whole

region – and I know it’s the correct region – but everything is just…”

He shook his head and returned the figurine back to the table.

“Anyway, I’m taking a bit of a break right now,” Daimen said. “I figured it might clear my head a bit.

Let me see things with a fresh perspective and all. But enough about me, let’s talk about you. I’ve

been wondering… how did the two of you get here so fast? I don’t know about you Zach, but Zorian

couldn’t have possibly just disappeared from home until after our parents went on their own journey

to Koth. That leaves… not a lot of time to actually get here.”

Zach and Zorian shared a look between each other. The two of them had debated what to tell

Daimen about their goals and situation for a while, and the general conclusion was that they had no

real option besides flat out telling him the truth. Zorian didn’t have a very high opinion of his brother,

but Daimen was anything but stupid, and he knew Zorian personally. Not very well, but still. There

was little doubt in Zorian’s mind that Daimen would immediately see through any stupid story they

might concoct about their visit. And in Zorian’s experience, Daimen wasn’t the type to quietly accept

that sort of thing.

They needed his full support and the only way to impress the gravity of the situation upon him was to

tell him about the time loop and their need for the Key. Hopefully Daimen would be less aggravating

to convince than, say, Silent Doorway Adepts.

“We opened a Gate and stepped through it,” Zorian eventually said.

Daimen gave him a weird look.

“A Gate? As in, a dimensional passage?” he asked.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “We created a portal straight from Eldemar to here in Koth.”

“You’re saying nonsense, but you look completely serious,” Daimen noted. “Either your acting has

really gotten good or you’re taking me for an idiot. Zorian, if you’re going to lie to me, at least check

things beforehand to make things at least slightly plausible. Do you have any idea how hard it is to

cast the Gate spell?”

“Oh yes,” Zorian nodded seriously. “Took me a while to get the hang of it.”

“I’m sure,” Daimen rolled his eyes. “I mean, you mastered the spell so well you can apparently open

the doorway all the way from Altazia to Southern Miasina. How does that even work, by the way?”

“Well, first I made a simulacrum and sent it to Koth…” Zorian began.

“Oh, so you can make simulacrums too? Way to go brother, you sure are a prodigy,” Daimen praised

mockingly.

“Then, when my copy arrived here, we coordinated with each other to open the passage between

our two locations,” Zorian continued, ignoring his jab. “With two casters working on the spell at both

ends of the passage, distance was not an issue.”

“That’s…” started Daimen, and then stopped and hummed thoughtfully to himself for a few seconds.

“Okay, I think that could actually work. Congratulations, I guess. At least one part of your story holds

water. It’s still silly though, because you cannot possibly cast either of those two spells. Hell, I can’t

cast either of them, so how could you?”

Zorian was just about to respond, but Zach was faster.

“What if we prove it to you?” he asked.

“Prove it to me?” Daimen asked incredulously. “And how do you propose to do that? Opening

another Gate to Eldemar?”

“Of course,” Zorian nodded. “Seeing is believing. Nothing we could say would be as convincing as

just showing you the truth. Fortunately, I left another simulacrum back home, so we can open a

portal there whenever I want.”

“Zorian, there is taking a joke too far, you know…” Daimen sighed.

“It costs you nothing to humor us for a bit,” Zach pointed out. “At worst you get to watch Zorian make

a fool out of himself for a bit.”

Daimen considered this for a second and then chuckled for a moment.

“Yeah, you have a point there,” Daimen said, grinning.

Jerks, the both of them.

“So should I open a portal right here, then?” Zorian asked innocently. “Since I obviously can’t do it, it

shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“No way,” Daimen told him. “I’m not risking my workshop just so you could prove your point.”

Zorian grinned at him.

“Annoying brat,” Daimen grumbled. “Alright, whatever. I have no idea of what you two are up to, but

I’ll play along for now. In return, though, I want your promise that you’ll tell me why you’re here

afterwards. Why you’re really here, that is, not another bullshit story.”

“Deal,” Zorian said, agreeing to the request with ease. He was going to do that anyway, so it cost

him nothing to promise such. “When do you have the time?”

“I’m not doing anything right now,” Daimen said, shaking his head and rising to his feet. “Let’s go.

The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get back to my work and Orissa.”

Zorian almost felt bad for his older brother. The demonstration Zorian planned to give was just a

beginning. There would be no peaceful routine for Daimen in this restart, at least if Zorian was

successful in convincing him he was telling the truth.

Almost. But not quite.

“I thought you said you were taking a break from work,” Zorian pointed out.

“Shut up,” Daimen responded. “You know what I mean.”

“He’s ‘working’ with his fiancée,” said Zach with a lecherous smile on his face. “I’m sure it’s hard,

physical labor.”

Daimen muttered something about teenagers but otherwise didn’t comment on Zach’s assertion.

“Do we need to leave the Taramatula estate for this?” Daimen asked. “If you end up causing another

scene by triggering the defensive wards or something, I’ll be pretty cross with you.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully.

Most wards were not made with detecting gate creation in mind, but one could never know for sure

what an unknown warding scheme would react to. Not without launching into an extensive analysis

of the wards themselves, which could itself trigger something and raise the alarm. Without knowing

how the local wards were laid out and what their sensitivity thresholds were, Zorian could only

advocate caution. As such, the group left the estate, leaving a message with the guards that they’d

be back ‘in a bit’.

Unsurprisingly, that would turn out to be a huge understatement. It was probably fine, though –

Zorian had seen the look the Taramatula guards gave Daimen when he said he’d be back ‘before

they know it’, and he had a feeling this wasn’t the first time Daimen pulled this sort of thing.

Maybe asking himself what Daimen saw in Orissa was the wrong thing to ask. A better question

was, what the hell did she see in him?

- break -

Zorian sat on one of the hills overlooking Cyoria, observing the city. Or at least pretending to do so –

in reality, most of his attention was on Daimen, who was standing beside him and staring at the city

in utter silence. Zach was lying on the grass next to them, whistling some annoyingly catchy tune

and tracing outlines in the clouds with his finger, not even pretending that the city interested him.

The whole situation was a strange sight to Zorian’s eyes, and not really how he had expected the

situation to develop once they brought Daimen back to Eldemar.

When the group had been back in Koth, and Zorian proceeded to cast the Gate spell successfully,

he had expected Daimen to… well, do something. Be shocked, or at least surprised. Maybe even

become aggressive towards them, demanding an explanation or doubting their identity again. At the

very least, he expected his brother to be visibly incredulous at the feat and have trouble deciding

how to respond. Instead, Daimen just got very quiet and serious, not saying much and observing

everything around him with uncommon intensity. He cast a number of spells that looked fairly exotic

to Zorian’s eyes, but which he suspected were meant to tell him whether or not he was stuck in an

illusion, detect if his mind was being tampered with, and reveal any hidden presences lurking around

them. That done, he cast the Mind Blank spell on himself, followed by three different privacy wards,

and then threw some kind of metal sphere through the dimensional passage. Some kind of remote

magical sensor, obviously. Only once the sphere told him there was no obvious trap around the

Eldemar side of the gate did he agree to cross over.

Seeing Zorian’s simulacrum upon arrival made him frown, but he did not comment upon it. In fact, he

did not comment much on anything that happened since then, opting to just silently scrutinize

everything. Zach and Zorian teleported him around Eldemar for a bit, just to drive home the point

that yes, they really did open a passage straight back home, and then brought Daimen here to this

hill when they realized the man was just passively following after them and not reacting to things.

Frankly, Zorian was getting a little concerned there. They had been on this hill for half an hour now,

and Daimen was just standing there like a statue, staring at the city with this weird glassy

expression. Did they… break Daimen or something?

“Talk to us,” Zorian finally said, not able to restrain himself any longer. Zach stopped whistling for a

moment and inclined his head towards them, waiting to see whether Daimen would react.

He did. As if woken from a dream by Zorian’s statement, he took a deep breath and slowly turned in

place until he faced Zorian.

“Who are you really?” Daimen asked curiously. His voice was calm and unhurried, but Zorian could

detect an undercurrent of frustration and anger lurking there. He may have mind blanked himself, but

Zorian had years of experience of reading people’s emotions and matching them to their facial

expressions and mannerisms.

“I’m Zorian, of course,” he told Daimen, equally calm and unhurried. He had expected this might

happen. If a person you know suddenly got impossibly good at something or developed mastery in

brand new fields out of the blue, it was reasonable to decide they could be possessed or an

impersonator.

“No, you’re not,” Daimen said lightly, shaking his head. “Zorian is… too young to be capable of all

this. My brother works hard and is almost as smart as me, but he just didn’t have enough time to get

this good. So you can’t be him. Who are you and why did you go to the trouble of setting this up?”

Zorian had half a mind to dispute this assertion that he was ‘almost as smart’ as Daimen… but he

had to be honest and admit that Daimen was, if anything, being overly generous there. Things never

came to Zorian as naturally as they did to Daimen.

“Why are you so calm if you think I’m someone other than your brother?” Zorian asked curiously. “If I

thought Kirielle was replaced with an imposter while I wasn’t looking, I sure as hell wouldn’t be calm

about it.”

Daimen frowned at his mention of Kirielle. Maybe he didn’t know that Zorian was supposed to watch

over her while their parents went to Koth? It was rather unexpected of him to agree to that, so

maybe Mother never notified him of that little fact.

“I’m calm because raging at you would solve nothing,” Daimen said. “I need answers, and I doubt I

could force them out of either of you two. You are a mage capable of creating simulacrums,

teleporting across the country at whim and opening Gates to another continent. Your friend here has

been more low-key, but his relaxed manner makes me think he’s actually the more dangerous of the

two of you.”

“Indeed,” Zorian commented.

“I don’t know, Zorian, I think a lot of people would be way more terrified of you than they would be

me,” said Zach, still lying around on the grass, completely ignoring the tense situation developing

beside him.

“So I can do little except try and see what you want and hope that Zorian is still alive,” Daimen

concluded, ignoring the comment.

“I see,” Zorian sighed. “I suppose it’s not too surprising for you to reach this conclusion from where

you’re standing. However, you are wrong. I am Zorian. Your logic makes sense, but only if you make

certain assumptions about the passage of time involved.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Daimen said, frowning. “Stop trying to sound mysterious

and explain yourself.”

“Very well,” Zorian said. “The truth is that it has been a while since we last saw each other, brother. It

might seem like I’m implausibly capable, but it took me almost six years, instruction from experts that

most people don’t have access to, and enough money to finance a small country for a year to get

this good. I’m six years older than I should be, but I’m still Zorian.”

“That’s… ridiculous,” Daimen said. But there was a sliver of doubt in his voice. Or was it hope? He

probably didn’t want to believe Zorian had been replaced by someone.

“So was our claim that we made a dimensional doorway across continental distances,” pointed out

Zach. “And yet we’re here, aren’t we?”

“That’s different,” Daimen protested. “At least that’s theoretically possible. This… I can’t think of a

way this could work. You can’t just add an extra six years of life to a person without anyone noticing

anything. Not even the best time dilation chambers could give him that. Besides, he implied he was

interacting with the world at large while he lived out those six years, so time dilation couldn’t be what

he’s talking about. Where does that leave us?”

“It leaves us with a world in which time repeats itself,” Zorian told him. “On the eve of the Summer

Festival, everything is reverted to the start of the month. All that you did in the previous month is

undone, and you forget. Everyone forgets. You lived through this exact same month so many times,

making the same motions, same decisions, oblivious to this… time loop that the world is bound in.”

Well, at least Zorian assumed so. Any changes in a given restart could be somehow traced to

actions of either him or Zach, and surely none of their actions thus far were big enough to propagate

all the way to Koth, right?

“We remember, though,” Zorian continued. “We can advance our skills across restarts and learn

from our mistakes. Which is how I got as good as I did in such a seemingly short amount of time.”

“You’re telling me I’ve been essentially doing nothing for the past six years?” Daimen asked him

incredulously.

“Try several decades,” Zach said. “Six years ago is when Zorian ended up gaining the ability to

retain skills and memories across restarts. The time loop has been going on for decades before that,

though.”

Daimen looked like he was going to say something but then started pacing around the grassy hill

instead, mumbling something unintelligible to himself.

Seeing how they were back to waiting for Daimen to snap out of it again, Zach just shrugged and

went back to tracing the shapes in the clouds again.

After about five minutes, Daimen suddenly stopped and approached Zorian again.

“I’m not saying I believe you…” he began hesitantly. “Because I don’t. It’s crazy. But I’m willing to

hear you out in more detail.”

“Fair enough,” Zorian nodded solemnly. He cupped his hands in front of him and created an

illusionary image of a slowly-spinning planet in front of him. Above the planet was a simple drawing

of an upturned triangle connected to a single horizontal tine through its tip. “In the beginning, there

was just the world we all lived on and an ancient artifact called the Sovereign Gate…”

- break -

The pretty illusions and the detailed story did not convince Daimen that their story was true. Not fully,

anyway. He was forced to admit that Zorian probably was who he said he was, if only because he

knew too many random details about their childhood days, but he found the time loop to be quite a

crazy idea. There were not a whole lot of other answers that would explain things, though, so Zorian

was hoping it wouldn’t be long before he fully accepted things. It helped that he had introduced

Daimen to Xvim and Alanic, who were somehow more convincing to Daimen than his own brother. If

Zorian was interpreting things correctly, Daimen found him pretty unnerving now, which was both

kind of annoying and kind of flattering.

But no matter; while Daimen was busy coming to terms with the truth of the world, other preparations

and operations continued unimpeded. The Silent Doorway adepts were finally convinced to give

them a chance in this restart too, and Zorian threw himself into the task of helping the aranea

understand their Bakora Gate better. There was also the vague plan of transporting some of their

mages to distant Bakora gates in order to obtain their gate keys for future restarts, but that was still

in the beginning stages.

The time to take advantage of the Black Room beneath Cyoria also came and went, and this time

Zach and Zorian were no longer the only people inside. Kael and Xvim also joined them. Kael

couldn’t exactly practice his alchemy inside the Black Room, but he wanted time to rewrite and

reorganize his research notes a little, since their size and the haphazard manner in which they were

written were making the whole thing gradually unmanageable. He claimed it took him most of the

restart thus far just to figure out what he did in the past and how to build up upon it. As for Xvim, he

was switching his time between prodding Zach and Zorian whenever he felt they were slacking off

and experimenting with various shaping regimens. Like Kael, he also had a mountain of notes, but

he claimed there was no need for him to rewrite and organize anything. Perhaps it was because he

was older and more experienced with note-taking, or maybe he just read fast and had an absurdly

good memory, but he had no problem with quickly absorbing the notes that Zorian gave him at the

start of each restart.

Alanic and Taiven declined to participate. Alanic claimed there was no point in him being there, while

Taiven said she didn’t want to be stuck in a tiny little room with four men for a month. Which was…

fair enough. He really should have thought of that before he even brought the idea up for her

consideration.

Zach commented, with a suggestive grin, that he wouldn’t mind giving up his spot in one of the future

restarts so Zorian and Taiven could have the Black Room all to themselves ‘to experiment’.

Thankfully, Taiven took it in good humor and just rolled her eyes at him.

It was not long after they returned from the Black Room that Zorian finally succeeded at something

that had been bothering him for quite a while now.

“I did it!” he exclaimed, barging into Zach’s room one day. “I finally succeeded!”

He was greeted with the sight of Zach sitting on the floor in front of one of the aranea that the Silent

Doorway Adepts had sent to Cyoria to act as their representative. Zorian had placed telepathic

relays between Cyoria and their main colony, making such an arrangement less problematic than it

would otherwise be. Normally, finding Zach talking to one of the aranea without Zorian being present

would be quite an unusual sight. The aranea didn’t have much respect for a non-psychic like Zach,

and Zach didn’t tolerate their condescension well. However, Zorian could identify the aranea in

question at a glance, thanks to one of her main eyes being covered with a milky white membrane,

having been ruined in some magical accident in her youth. Frozen Thoughts Spanning Across

Bottomless Chasms was somewhat deviant by aranean standards, and held a deep fascination for

non-psychic beings and how they perceive the world. Zorian suspected it had something to do with

her sight being crippled at a relatively young age, and the wider aranean philosophy of considering

non-psychic beings as fundamentally crippled. Regardless, Frozen Thoughts was one of the rare

aranea Zorian met over the restarts who actively preferred interacting with Zach over him, and it

wasn’t unusual to see her seek him out, even when she had no official business to bring up.

Zorian wasn’t entirely sure why Zach was so willing to indulge Frozen Thoughts’ curiosity, when he

clearly didn’t think much of aranea in general. Perhaps he just found the situation novel enough to

be interesting, or maybe he was just too polite to tell her off, but he treated Frozen Thoughts with a

surprising amount of understanding and patience.

“Well,” Zach said. “Congratulations, I guess. What exactly did you succeed at?”

“I found a way to open the secret research facility hidden in the ceiling of the Cyorian web,” Zorian

said. “Without destroying any of the contents, I mean.”

“Oh?” Zach said, sitting up a little straighter. “Anything interesting?”

“I’m still going through it all, but at first glance most of it seems to revolve around their efforts to

translate human magics into forms more compatible with the aranea,” Zorian said.

“Makes sense,” Frozen Thoughts said. “Isn’t that the whole point of living beneath Cyoria? At least

for us aranea.”

“Right,” Zorian said. “Well, that means that little of it will be useful to me directly… but I may have

struck gold here regardless. I think the other aranean webs are going to be very interested in this.

With the kind of knowledge in my arsenal, I might be able to arrange for heavier concessions from

the aranean webs we meet. Maybe I can even talk them into teaching me some of their really good

stuff, and then use that to get more really good stuff out of other webs and so on…”

“I’m amused that you feel comfortable discussing a plot like that right in front of me,” Frozen

Thoughts said. “But I can’t really blame you. My web would have probably been even more ruthless

about taking advantage of that kind of opportunity if they were in your situation.”

“That’s interesting to hear,” Zach said speculatively. “Perhaps we might delegate some of our skill

gathering to your web, then? Zorian is understandably a little skittish of going full raider on your

people, but if we were to supply you with a bunch of secret aranean techniques and equipment and

left it up to you how you use them to acquire more… well, I’m sure that Zorian wouldn’t inquire too

deeply about the methods you used in your dealings.”

“I’m right here, Zach,” Zorian complained.

“So was Frozen Thoughts when you explained your master plan, but that didn’t stop you,” Zach

grinned. “Besides, I feel most of the araneas we met think a little too highly of themselves and could

do with a little humbling.”

“I’m… going to put this topic off for now,” Zorian said. “Anyway, I did find one thing in the research

facility that could be interesting. The web actually had a whole project dedicated to trying to adapt

some of their mental techniques to human psychics. The idea, as far as I can tell, was to create a

limited skillset for a sort of… human vassal. They didn’t call them that, of course, but that’s kind of

what it amounts to. The psychic would get instruction from them, the sort they cannot really get

anywhere else, and in return they would serve as the aranean spokesperson and, in their own

words, a ‘problem solver’. There would be no coercion or mind bending involved here – the

documents were quite clear on that, as the web leadership wanted everything to be completely

aboveboard if one of the psychics was subjected to mental examination and other scrutiny. The

psychics would be kept in line through a simple threat of withdrawing support and teaching

assistance to anyone who doesn’t cooperate. And possibly legal persecution, since they intended to

implement this only after they worked out some kind of formal deal with the Cyorian administration.”

“So almost exactly like those mages and families that swear fealty to established Houses,” Zach

noted.

“Yes, that is probably where they got the idea,” Zorian confirmed. “That’s why I called them vassals.

Anyway, most of these skills are too rudimentary for someone like me. I’m already too good at

telepathy, mind reading, mental combat and the like to benefit from the bulk of the program.

However, the web was also experimenting with providing the most loyal of these vassals mental

techniques like those used by aranean elders to enhance their thinking. I’m still poring over the

information, but the research notes seem pretty complete. The Cyorian web seems to have

documented a lot of the obvious dangers and pitfalls involved in adapting these kinds of ‘inner

techniques’ to human minds. With access to this, I might actually be able to start tinkering in this field

without doing something irreversible to myself.”

“They must have left quite a trail of insanity behind them with such experimentation,” Frozen

Thoughts speculated. “Tinkering with that kind of thing produces a lot of complications even in our

own communities. Trying to adapt these techniques to human minds probably involved a lot of

dramatic failures.”

“The documents never say what happened to the humans involved with the experimentation, but I

suspect you are right,” Zorian nodded.

“If you want my advice, I suggest you start dabbling in this field by going to the Perfect Phantasm

Crafters,” Frozen Thoughts told him.

“Them?” Zorian asked, surprised. “I didn’t know they were experts on these kind of techniques.”

“They aren’t,” Frozen Thoughts said. “But pretty much all aranean webs have some measure of

expertise in these, and the Perfect Phantasm Crafters are one of the webs with better understanding

of the differences between human and aranean minds. Additionally, their brand of inner techniques

is relatively safe and inoffensive. They focus on the so-called self-illusions. Techniques that leave

most of your thoughts untouched, merely altering how you perceive the world – highlighting some

things in your vision, blocking out sounds, and so on. On the face of it, the idea of deliberately

deceiving yourself may seem kind of dubious, but it can be very useful and it’s easily undone. If you

want to get started on this without risking insanity, the Perfect Phantasm Crafters are probably your

best bet.”

After some more questions about the matter, Zorian left Zach and Frozen Thoughts to whatever

discussion they had been having before he had barged in and left. He had too many things to worry

about in the current restart to start an extensive new project like this, but it was something to think

about in the future.

- break -

“So what do you think of the Taramatula?” Daimen asked.

Zorian glanced at his brother, trying to decipher why he had suddenly asked him that question. Like

usual, Daimen always had a mind blank on when he knew Zorian was around – in the beginning he

had dropped that thing once he had realized he was really his brother and not some imposter, but

when he later found out that Zorian was a master mind mage he started zealously applying it on

himself whenever they met.

Since Daimen was clearly so paranoid about mind magic, Zorian had held off on confronting him

about his own psychic nature and how much he really knew about it. Besides, Daimen was still

reeling from the realization that he was just a copy in an endlessly repeating pocket universe, so he

felt it would be a little bit mean to dump too many things on him at once. He had time. That particular

question wasn’t very time critical.

Currently the two of them were taking a slow walk across the outer boundaries of the Taramatula

estate, ostensibly to just enjoy the view but actually so they could have a conversation without

fearing someone would eavesdrop on them. Zach was not present at the moment, since Daimen

requested this to be a private meeting between the two of them. Instead, he stayed behind in the

central building of the estate, exchanging stories with the tutor that the Taramatula had provided to

both of them free of charge – after the relatively embarrassing showing he and Zach had during their

initial reception, the Taramatula decided they really needed a lesson in the local language and

customs. Especially since it soon became obvious that the two of them would be visiting their place

quite often in the near future, due to their frequent meetings with Daimen.

The estate itself was quite large, with a massive central building ringed by a multitude of smaller

ones. At least a quarter of the smaller buildings housed bees instead of people. All of the structures

were sparkling white, not because they were painted such and kept clean, but because they were

built using some kind of pearly white stone that didn’t seem to get dirty. The central building had

more color, though, being obviously intended as more ostentatious and eye-catching. Colorful,

complicated braids and geometric shapes framed all of the doors and windows, and zig-zagged

across open walls. They weren’t painted on either, and instead seemed to be made out of semi-

precious stones and magical crystals embedded straight into the structure of the walls. Zorian wasn’t

sure, but they may have doubled as reinforcement for the building’s warding scheme, so there was a

possibility they weren’t just ornamental.

Taramatula were also very fond of statues, most of them depicting stern-looking people that were

presumably prominent ancestors of the family, but there were also a fair number of ones depicting

various magical creatures. And giant bees, of course. What would a bee-focused family of mages do

without statues of giant bees? All of the statues were carved and painted to be as lifelike as

possible. The people of Koth were very fond of realism in art, and Taramatula were no exception.

“They’re surprisingly hospitable and friendly,” said Zorian. “I expected them to be more arrogant and

conceited, considering their status.”

“This is actually pretty typical of how most minor nobles behave,” Daimen told him. “I interacted with

a lot of them over the years, and they’re rarely overtly unpleasant. Even if they think you’re beneath

them, they will rarely let that show unless you go out of the way to annoy them in some fashion.”

“I concede to your expertise in the matter, then,” Zorian shrugged. “Anyway, I kind of like them.”

“I’m glad,” Daimen said. “I guess you’d have no issue with taking my side when Mother and Father

come, then?”

Zorian gave him an incredulous look.

“What?” Daimen asked defensively.

“You think my opinion actually matters to them?” Zorian asked, raising his eyebrow at him. For that

matter, he was surprised that Daimen cared about his opinion either. “But sure, throw my support of

you right into their face if they ask. Not like their opinion of me could get much lower.”

“Zorian, that’s… a little too harsh towards your parents, don’t you think?” Daimen tried.

“Nope,” Zorian answered unrepentantly. “I never mattered to them. Not until you made it clear you

have no intention of settling down and taking over their family business and Fortov showed them

what a failure he really is. Then they expected me to drop all of my dreams and plans and remake

myself into what they needed me to be.”

Daimen was quiet for a while.

“I see,” he eventually said. “You were so reasonable and calm during our meetings that I almost

forgot what a perpetual ball of anger and resentment you tend to be.”

“Screw you too, Daimen,” Zorian told him simply. “What exactly did you bring me here for, anyway?”

“Well, first of all I wanted to say I’m very impressed with what you’ve achieved so far,” Daimen

began.

Zorian gave him a strange look. Daimen was praising him? What the hell was going on here?

“Don’t look at me like that,” Daimen protested. “I really am. Six years is not that long in the grand

scheme of things. You’re still effectively a year younger than me, yet you’ve accomplished so much.

I think that most people, even if they were handed the same opportunity as you, wouldn’t have

gotten as far in such a short period of time.”

Zorian stayed silent for a few seconds, unsure how to respond to that.

“Thanks, I guess,” he finally said. “Does that mean you accept the time loop as real now, then?”

“Yes,” Daimen nodded. “I guess I do.”

“In that case, I’m going to be frank with you,” said Zorian. “We originally sought you out because we

need your help with something.”

“Of course you do,” Daimen said matter-of-factly. “A treasure hunt of some sort, I’m guessing?”

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “Remember what I told you about the third time traveler and how he

stranded us all here? Well, there is potentially a way for us to unlock the exit. However, to do that we

need to gather five pieces of the Key that holds dominion over the Sovereign Gate. And one of these

pieces in supposed to be lost here in Koth.”

Daimen listened to his explanation very calmly at first, nodding slightly here and there to indicate

agreement and that he was paying attention, but then he suddenly flinched and straightened his

back, as if struck by some realization.

“Wait… the Sovereign Gate is an ancient imperial artifact!” Daimen exclaimed.

Zorian looked at him like he had gone mad.

“Well, yes,” he said slowly.

“Which means these ‘Keys’ you’re looking for are probably also ancient imperial artifacts,” Daimen

concluded.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed, still not understanding why Daimen seemed so animated about this. “The

ring, the crown, the dagger, the orb and the staff of the First Emperor of Ikosia. Supposedly, the orb

has been lost here in Koth. One of the emperors personally led an invasion force into the region to

conquer it, but the army was scattered and driven deep into the jungles, where most of them

perished. Including the emperor, whose body and possessions were never found. And he was

reportedly carrying the orb with him at the time, so…”

Zorian stopped talking because Daimen began to laugh, first quietly and then progressing into a full-

blown maniacal cackling. Seriously, what was wrong with him?

“Daimen?” he asked uncertainly.

“Of course. Of course!” Daimen said. As if that explained anything. “It all comes back to this in the

end, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why this is so funny to you?” Zorian asked him, voice laced

with annoyance.

“Because, my dear little brother,” Daimen told him, “that orb is what I’m after, too.”

Chapter 068

Green Hell

Historically, Koth had been a frequent target for Ikosian expansionism. The jungles that covered the

region were dangerous to traverse and hard to clear, but they held valuable resources that couldn’t

be found anywhere else. This made Kothic societies developed and wealthy enough that nobody

would scoff at conquering them, yet left the region as a whole politically disunited and fragmented.

Thus, Ikosian rulers often tried to bring the region under their thumb, reasoning that a bunch of

bickering city-states and small kingdoms could not possibly unite together in time to repulse them.

But such initiatives were never successful. Koth was very far from Ikosian heartland, over rather

inhospitable terrain, and fielding significant armies there was very hard. Additionally, the states of

Koth proved quite willing to temporarily set aside their differences in order to resist Ikosian incursions

into the region.

One of these unsuccessful campaigns, one that failed particularly dramatically, was the one

launched by Awan-Temti Khumbastir. He was one of the more successful Ikosian emperors, but his

success was built upon many small successes and the gradual prosperity of the empire under his

reign. He had no grand feats to his name, and he feared his rule would be forgotten as soon as his

corpse cooled. Thus, he set his sights on the one thing he felt would immortalize his rule for all time.

By conquering Koth – something that his predecessors had repeatedly failed at – he would acquire

the glory he craved and prove himself an emperor worth remembering.

It helped that Koth was being increasingly united by the rapidly growing League of Sawosi at the

time, fueling fears that Koth might coalesce into a real competitor to the Empire if allowed to develop

unchecked.

The campaign was a failure. Sure, the Ikosian armies had their successes in the beginning, and

most historians agree that the war was a close one until the very end. But what does that matter

when the last battle had been such a spectacular loss for the Ikosians? Frustrated by the slow

progress of the campaign and by the very real possibility he would be returning home in failure,

Awan-Temti assumed personal command of the army and led it straight into a trap the League of

Sawosi had set up for him. The resulting battle was a total rout for the Ikosian army, which was then

forced to retreat deep into the dangerous jungles that made up the interior of the continent. Most of

the force perished there, picked off by diseases, wildlife or environmental hazards. This included

Awan-Temti himself, who would vanish without a trace somewhere in the trackless jungles. His

corpse and belongings were never found, and the uncertainty of whether he was really dead or just

missing would cripple attempts of his successor to assume the throne for quite a few years, leading

to a period of great instability and turmoil for the empire. In a strange way, Awan-Temti had actually

achieved the fame he had sought when he went to Koth – the campaign of conquest would become

a popular cautionary tale against arrogance and glory-seeking, his name never to be forgotten.

As for the League of Sawosi, they only had a short while to celebrate their victory. In order to fuel

their war machine, they had taxed and arm-twisted their vassals and member states to such a

massive extent that they revolted against the League the moment the Ikosians had left. Its armies

devastated by the war and its treasury empty, the League was unable to respond to this challenge

against its authority and quickly fell apart. No other power would ever come as close to unifying Koth

as the League of Sawosi had come before the war.

Zorian was getting a little off-track in his musings, though – the important thing was that Awan-Temti

had been carrying quite a few imperial treasures on him when he disappeared, and this possibly

included the imperial orb. This was not actually stated anywhere in official Ikosian history, which was

very quiet about the fate of the orb, but several historians had noted that imperial chroniclers

mysteriously stopped mentioning the orb in the aftermath of the campaign. It was likely that Awan-

Temti’s successors had been unwilling to admit that one of the artifacts of the first emperor had been

lost in that campaign and had done their best to quietly sweep the issue under the rug by ignoring

the orb’s existence from that moment onward. In any case, attempts to locate Awan-Temti’s final

resting place were not exactly a rare occurrence. The orb aside, the rest of the treasures he had

been carrying were a tempting prize on their own. None of these attempts were successful, but

Zorian was armed with something none of the previous treasure hunters had had in their possession

– an infallible way to detect the presence of the orb when at a considerable distance from himself,

regardless of any wards or other obstacles that may be foiling mundane divination.

“You have an in-built artifact detector,” Daimen summarized, giving him a jealous glare.

“Only in regards to a certain type of artifact, but yes,” confirmed Zorian smugly. “I still need someone

to point me in the right direction, of course. I was originally going to ask you for help in that regard. I

mean, you’re supposed to be this famous treasure hunter and all…”

“I am a famous treasure hunter,” Daimen pointed out.

“Right,” Zorian nodded. “So I figured that you might be able to help me narrow down the search

region faster. Give me a few tips, connect me to the right people, maybe even get personally

involved. If you’re already searching for the orb yourself, though, then everything just got a lot

easier.”

Zorian was also reassured that someone had independently come to the same conclusion he and

Zach had regarding the orb’s location. It meant they probably weren’t pursuing a fake lead.

Daimen gave him an indecipherable look, staring at him in silence for a moment. Finally, he slowly

shook his head and spoke.

“I don’t know whether I love you or hate you right now,” he told Zorian. “On one hand, I have been

stuck with this thing for months now, and it’s driving me crazy. My own team had begun to lose faith

in me and had started complaining about wasting time on this. You swooping in with a solution in

hand is exciting, but a part of me is incensed that somebody else is going to hand me a solution to

this search. It feels like you’ve just stolen some of my thunder, you know?”

Oh, Zorian knew that feeling very, very well. But no matter, the really interesting thing was that

Daimen’s own team was starting to mutiny. That explained a lot about what was happening,

honestly. Such as why Daimen was currently inside the Taramatula estate instead of out there in the

field, trying to find the orb as soon as he could.

“Is that why you decided to take a break from everything for a while?” Zorian asked. “To give your

team a chance to calm down a little?”

“Ugh,” Daimen said, grimacing. “Sometimes you’re too perceptive for your own good, Zorian. Yeah, I

wanted to keep going but they were being a big bunch of babies and complaining about sleeping in

the jungle for several weeks and whatnot. Eventually we got into a bit of an argument and things got

too heated for my liking, so I decided to give everyone some rest until I could rethink my approach.”

Hmm. From what Daimen had told him and Zach earlier, Daimen had had his team focus on one

specific area of the jungle for a while now, since he was sure he’d had the right spot identified.

Meaning that he was probably telling them to comb through the exact same area over and over

again with no results. Zorian wasn’t surprised that they’d eventually lost their patience.

“Anyway,” continued Daimen, “give me a few days to gear up and organize everyone again, and we

can go see if that detector of yours is as good as you say.”

“Wait, you’re taking your entire team with you?” Zorian said, frowning. “Why? Can’t we just pop over

there quickly and check things out?”

“No, because it’s a huge area covered in dense, monster-infested jungle,” Daimen told him. “I can

only teleport us to a few places there in a safe and reliable manner. The rest of the way we’ll have to

walk, and I don’t feel safe doing that with only three people. I’m good, and I’m guessing you and

Zach are too, but that’s not enough. Even the best mage is vulnerable to surprise attacks, and there

is plenty of opportunity for that here.”

“I thought you said you had it narrowed down to one spot,” Zorian pointed out curiously.

“Well, relative to the huge swathes of jungle that cover the entire region? Yeah, I did,” Daimen said,

a little defensively. “It’s still a lot of ground to cover, though. Why do you think I’ve been stuck on this

for this long?”

Zorian was about to try and argue that everything would still be so much faster if it was just the three

of them, but Daimen cut him off with a warning stare.

“Look,” Daimen said, “I know you’re on a time limit here, but be reasonable. It’s a dangerous land full

of chameleon drakes, devourer mantises, howlers, thorn swallow flocks and gods know what else.

Stumbling about in haste will see us all killed in a matter of hours. Besides… Orissa is going to kill

me if I try to do this without her, and my team will be waiting for their turn right behind her. They were

a part of this from the start. I would end up looking like a petty glory hound if I cut them out of the

endeavor just before we claim the prize. I’m not wrecking my reputation like that. I’m sure you can

spare a day or two on this.”

And that was how Zach and Zorian found themselves searching for the orb of the first emperor with

Daimen, Orissa and 15 other people.

- break -

When Zorian had conceded to Daimen’s request to organize a full-fledged expedition for the orb,

he’d known the whole endeavor was bound to turn into something of a spectacle. He had been

absolutely right about that, but he had also completely misjudged what would cause it. He had

thought the situation would gradually develop as he and Zach were forced to reveal their capabilities,

piece by piece, during the course of the expedition. What actually happened was that Daimen

outright told people that his little brother was secretly a master mage that rivaled him in skill, that

Zach was similarly talented, and that the two of them had found some kind of imperial seal that let

them detect other imperial artifacts nearby.

This wasn’t really what Zorian had had in mind when Daimen had told him that he would handle

explanations and that Zorian needn’t worry about thinking up an excuse for his powers. He was

tempted to ask Daimen why he didn’t tell them all about the time loop too, but he was afraid that the

madman might actually go for it. How the hell did Daimen think this was a good solution to the

problem?

Daimen also decided, without even bothering to consult with Zorian, that field deployment would

happen via gate usage. Daimen would teleport to the target area on his own and then coordinate

with Zorian to open a dimensional passage between the Taramatula estate (where the rest of the

team would be waiting) and their destination. This would admittedly speed things up considerably,

since not everyone in the group could teleport and there were a lot of supplies to transport as well…

but it meant revealing to the whole group that Zorian could open gates. Daimen saying that Zorian

was a master mage is one thing, and might be passed off as Daimen being biased in favor of his

family, but a mage that could open gates at Zorian’s age naturally raised a lot of eyebrows.

Annoyingly, everyone seemed to quietly accept that Daimen could cast the gate spell, even though

the only reason he had that capability was because Zorian had taken the time to teach it to him in

this restart. He normally wouldn’t have bothered with that, but entering a Black Room had severed

him from his simulacrums outside of it, dispersing them in very short order. This meant that he would

have to keep sending simulacrums on a multi-day journey to Koth every time he emerged from one,

which was annoying and quite impractical. As such, he decided to try and teach the gate spell to

Daimen so he could open the gate to Koth with his help.

Fair is fair, though – it took only two days for Daimen to learn the spell, which was kind of amazing.

He was already extremely good at dimensionalism, it turned out, having done the relevant shaping

exercises and practiced with various types of teleportation. He had simply never found anyone

willing to teach him the actual spell. Experts that could cast the gate spell were very rare and they

didn’t share that kind of magic with others lightly. Not even if the person was a famous treasure

hunter like Daimen.

In any case, Zorian was more than a little annoyed at how Daimen had handled the expedition

preparations and thus decided to vent a little by showing off more than he had initially planned. He

took four of his combat golems, which he had been mass producing in preparation for the assault on

the Ibasan gate beneath Cyoria, and brought them with him to the expedition as his bodyguards. He

probably didn’t need them, but the look on Daimen’s face when he stomped into the Taramatula

estate with four golems in tow was priceless. It would also serve as a useful test of how his golems

handled unfamiliar environments, he supposed.

Finally, the gate was opened and 19 people (plus four golems) entered the area that supposedly

held the orb – a dense, shadowy patch of jungle known to the locals simply as ‘Dai Hurna’. Green

Hell.

“A simple, but apt description,” one of Daimen’s team members told him. He was an older,

weathered-looking man that served as the group’s main ward expert. Both in making and breaking

them. “I’ve been in more dangerous places, but this one is near the top of the list. Try to stay near

the center of the group. You and your buddy may be good, but some things can only be acquired

with age.”

Zorian had been rather dismissive of the man’s words at the time, since the weathered old mage

obviously did not know the full story about him and Zach, but he would soon learn there was some

wisdom to be found in the old man’s words. The vegetation alone was a huge obstacle to exploring

the area – there were no jungle trails crisscrossing the place, and the lack of sunlight made the area

shadowy and dim, making it hard to spot dangers and navigate through the foliage. Zorian’s mind

sense helped there, allowing him to sense the minds of predatory animals with relative ease, but not

every danger had a thinking mind behind it. Some of the vegetation was mobile and predatory, for

instance, but not especially intelligent. Zorian found that out the hard way when a tangle of jungle

vines wrapped themselves around him and tried to drag him off into a pit when he got a little

careless. Thankfully, his golem bodyguards managed to fight them off long enough for Zorian to

clear his head and ignite the air around himself, forcing them to back off.

“You are lucky,” the weathered mage told him afterwards. “That fisher vine was a young one. Older

ones grow razor-sharp thorns along their length. I’m sure you can imagine what would have

happened to you if one of those got ahold of you. Though admittedly, older fisher plants are easier to

spot than young ones…”

How embarrassing. Still, at least he knew that he had made the bodyguard golems correctly – they

had reacted quickly and precisely to the crisis and managed to keep the plant from dragging him off

without breaking his bones in the process. Making golems that knew how to hold back their full

strength like that was pretty hard, Zorian had found.

Zorian conceded the man’s point after that and did not stray from the main group too much. Zach, on

the other hand, did not let that incident scare him off. He wandered around the area freely,

unconcerned with the various dangers crawling about the place. Zorian supposed that Zach had a

good reason to be so fearless, considering he had literal decades of experience at adventuring in

dangerous environments, unlike Zorian.

“Stop!” Zorian called out to the group. They all obeyed him. He knew that some of the people

gathered here looked down on him because of his age and perceived nepotism, but nobody doubted

his ability to detect danger anymore. He pointed at the area slightly to the right of the group. “Two

chameleon drakes up ahead. Big ones.”

Chameleon drakes were the primary danger of the area. They were tough, agile, fast, could change

the color of their hide so rapidly they were virtually invisible to the human eye, and routinely reached

about 3.5 meters in length. They also sometimes hunted in groups, and had no compunctions about

preying on humans. Green Hell was absolutely crawling with them for some reason.

Fortunately for the group, they had Zorian and his mind sense. Chameleon drakes might be a huge

danger to most travelers, but to Zorian, their highly developed minds stood out like glittering stars in

the night sky. The chameleon drakes were equipped with more than just speed, size and virtual

invisibility; they were also quite intelligent by animal standards. On the verge of sapience, in Zorian’s

estimation. Maybe even there, to an extent. This was no doubt a boon against most opponents, and

did much to explain how they could give seasoned mages so much trouble, but it made their

ambushes painfully obvious to a psychic of Zorian’s level.

Upon hearing Zorian’s warning, three people changed their stances and focused their attention on

the area he indicated. One was Orissa, another was a young woman in bright blue clothes named

Kirma and the third was a burly bearded man named Torun. These three were the scouts of the

group, scanning their surroundings for dangers, obstacles and even the orb itself. A bit pointless,

that last one, but being told that Zorian can simply detect the presence of the orb from a

considerable distance seemed to have awoken some kind of competitive spirit in the three.

Each of the three had their own methods of gathering information. Orissa’s was through her bees,

which she had scattered throughout the jungle around them. She carried on her back a huge

backpack-looking thing that was actually a portable beehive. A constant stream of bees was

constantly leaving the backpack under Orissa’s direction or returning to it to report their findings. It

looked pretty heavy, but Orissa was carrying it with practiced ease. Zorian was unsure whether that

was because Orissa was stronger than she looked, or if the hive was lightened in some way.

Orissa’s bees looked fairly mundane to Zorian’s amateur eyes. They didn’t have any special mental

signature either – Zorian had initially thought that maybe they were unified into some kind of

collective, like the cephalic rats, but he found no evidence of that. He asked Orissa about them, and

she admitted that the Taramatula couldn’t actually access the senses of their bees directly – instead

they had some method of ‘talking’ to the bees and getting usable information in the process.

Zorian could tell that whatever method the Taramatula used to direct and talk to their bees, it wasn’t

a structured spell. Orissa never did any chanting or gesturing, nor did she use any obvious spell

aids. The process seemed to be almost like breathing to her, as evidenced by the fact she could

direct her bees and talk to Zorian at the same time without any visible strain.

Kirma, the blue-clothed woman, was probably the most mundane of the three scouting mages. She

was clearly using classical scrying and other divinations for her work. What was noteworthy about

her was the divination compass she was using. It was a large, heavy looking, multi-layered

contraption of brass and silver, its shape vaguely reminiscent of a lotus flower. The ‘petals’ were

densely inscribed with mysterious glyphs and shapes that Zorian found hard to puzzle out through

casual inspection.

The lotus device seemed to be highly effective, because Kirma was cycling through some rather

complicated divinations with a speed that even Zorian would struggle to match.

Finally, there was Torun. Torun was constantly surrounded by a swarm of eyes that floated around

him, twitching to-and-fro as something caught their attention. Each one was different, differing in size

and internal structure of the eye from the others, and they looked very lifelike. To be precise, they

looked like they had been extracted from corpses of various magical beings famous for their visual

powers and then preserved in some fashion. Which was probably exactly what happened.

Zorian was about 90 percent sure that Torun couldn’t actually see through all of his eyes. In fact, he

suspected that the man was limited to rapidly cycling between them instead of being able to process

visual information from multiple eyes at once. There also seemed to be some severe distance

limitations involved, because he never sent them too far into the jungle to scout things.

“You are once again correct,” Orissa remarked after a while. “If I may ask, how are you detecting the

drakes from such a distance? Is this also the work of this mysterious imperial inheritance you

stumbled upon?”

“No, it’s just mind magic,” Zorian said. He could tell most people suspected as much by now, so

there was no need to be all secretive. A bunch of them had already cast some kind of mental

defense spell on themselves when they thought Zorian wasn’t looking. “It’s something of a specialty

of mine.”

“I see,” Orissa said, nodding. “I did suspect this was the case.”

“Hey, little Kazinski,” Torun called out to him. Zorian gave him an annoyed glare. That seemed to be

the newest name Daimen’s group had given him, and he hated it. “How good is that mind magic of

yours? Do you think you could snare one of those drakes and bring him over?”

Hmm. An interesting question. Chameleon drakes had considerable magic resistance, but it was

nothing absurd. He just might be able to subvert one and puppeteer it for a while. However, after he

did some subtle probing of their minds…

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not these ones, at least. They’re a bonded pair, and would never

abandon one another. I could dominate one of them perhaps, but the other would follow after them

and defend them.”

“Unnecessary fights will only slow us down,” Daimen stated. “Leave the drakes alone, Zorian. Torun

has enough eyes to play with, anyway.”

“You can never have enough eyes,” Torun said. “But actually, I was after the beast itself this time.

Chameleon drakes, much like their more mundane cousins, have the curious ability to move each of

their eyes independently of one another and thus focus on multiple things at once. And they have

four of them. I suspect I could learn… interesting things from them.”

“There is no shortage of chameleon drakes around here,” the withered old mage from earlier said.

“The kid can get you one later. Preferably a young one, so it does less damage when it inevitably

breaks out of its bindings and rampages throughout the camp.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Daimen told him. “Anyway, we’ll just go around them, I g-”

“No need,” said Zorian. “They’re leaving. They’ve noticed that we’ve stopped walking for too long

and found it suspicious, so they’ve called off the ambush.”

“Even better,” Daimen said, pleased. “Onward we go, then.”

After a few minutes, Zach stopped his wandering and approached him.

“I’ve thought of something,” he said. “What if you shapeshifted into a bird and simply flew around for

a bit? I bet you could cover ground pretty fast that way.”

“I’d be dead in a matter of minutes,” Zorian said, shaking his head. He’d thought of that idea already

and discarded it immediately afterwards. “The trees are pretty high here, and full of things that prey

on birds. If I fly high enough to be safe, the ground would be beyond the marker’s detection radius. If

I fly low, I probably get eaten by something.”

“Ah,” Zach winced. “Yeah, I didn’t think of that. And now that I think of it, the orb could easily end up

being underground. Probably the best place to get some safety in a place like this.”

“That’s it!” Daimen shouted, hitting himself in the forehead. He had evidently been eavesdropping on

their conversation, the jerk. “That’s what I’ve been missing all this time. Underground! We should

have been looking for the damn orb underground instead of simply searching through the foliage! I’m

such an idiot…”

After that, Daimen called for everyone to stop and make a base camp so they could discuss things

for a while. With this done, the group quickly came up with a plan to perform some kind of geomantic

ritual spell that would map out the basic shape of the underworld and narrow down their search on

that basis. Honestly, Zorian was feeling a bit lost there – he had studied many things over the course

of the time loop, but ritual spells involving more than one caster were not one of them. He mostly

kept to himself while the rest of the group was setting up the ritual. He thought about striking up a

conversation with his fellow time traveler, but Zach seemed to be trying to hit on Kirma, so Zorian left

him alone for now.

Eventually, his solitude was broken when Daimen pulled him to the edge of the camp, where Orissa

was already waiting, so that the three of them could have a conversation about something. Zorian

already had a pretty good idea what this was about.

“You’re interested in my mind magic, aren’t you?” Zorian asked Orissa, giving her a shrewd look.

“Ah, well…” Orissa fumbled slightly. “Was I that obvious? Yes, I must admit the topic intrigues me.”

“It’s a personal secret,” Zorian told her bluntly.

“Zorian!” Daimen protested, jumping to his fiancée’s aid.

“But I might be willing to share some of it if Daimen agrees to honestly answer a few questions for

me,” Zorian said, turning towards Daimen with a cheery smile.

“What kind of questions?” Daimen asked hesitantly.

“Questions about your own mind magic,” Zorian told him, his smile turning into a frown. “Questions

like why you never told me I was a natural mind mage when I was a child. You had to have known,

as a fellow natural mind mage, but you never said anything and left me to suffer alone.”

“W-What?” Daimen said, erupting into a burst of outraged laughter. “What the hell are you talking

about?”

“I know you’re like me, Daimen,” Zorian told him. “I can sense it. And you can sense me as well.”

“No, I can’t,” Daimen protested, shaking his head vigorously. “Maybe I have a potential for the sort of

mental bullshit you’re capable of, but I was never taught how to do that. They told me I was an

empath and taught me how to turn the ability on and off, and that’s it, okay? I don’t know what you’re

talking about.”

“You’re saying you never noticed anything unusual about me?” Zorian asked, frowning.

“Well…” Daimen laughed nervously. “I noticed you were very easy to read… but hell, that could have

meant anything!”

“You suspected the truth,” Zorian accused.

“Okay, so I did!” Daimen admitted. “But I couldn’t be sure, and why out myself for a mere suspicion?

Especially to a brother that hated me and constantly got me into trouble! And really, what if it was

true? What of it? If you really were an empath like me, that only made your actions more baffling and

annoying.”

“What good is empathy like that with no control?” Zorian snapped at him. “I couldn’t even walk into a

crowd without consequences! If you had taken a bit of time to teach me how to turn it off, or at least

told me what to watch out for, I wouldn’t have been nearly as ‘baffling and annoying’ as you thought I

was!”

The ‘discussion’ then degenerated into several moments of incoherent shouting and accusations

before Orissa decided to act and stopped the argument by interposing herself in between them.

“Why don’t we all take a break for a moment and calm down,” Orissa said. Her bees synchronized

their buzzing into an ominous hum. “You two are just talking past each other at this point. You’re

making assumptions about each other that clearly aren’t true.”

Zorian scoffed, and almost snapped at her as well for trying to use such petty intimidation tactics on

him. As if he were afraid of a bunch of bees. Still, she kind of had a point that he and Daimen would

probably be better served to sit down and have a more… sedate discussion about the issue.

Daimen backed down even sooner, too smitten with Orissa to really stand up to her on the issue.

Having successfully defused the situation, Orissa then excused herself, claiming this was something

they had to work out on their own and that she didn’t want to intrude. Daimen tried to protest and

keep her there, but Zorian was grateful for her action and gave her a small nod as she left.

After a while, they started talking. As it turns out, Daimen had been empathic for as long as he could

remember. His empathy was nothing like Zorian’s, however. Daimen’s empathy was weaker than

Zorian’s had been, but far more controllable. He never suffered any headaches in crowds, and he

could focus it on specific people at will. He realized early on that this ability was something unique to

him, and that he could get far more out of it if nobody knew he had it. Thus, he kept it a secret from

everyone. During his time in the academy, he had realized that he was an empath and secured

himself instruction from an older empath who had taught him how to turn his ability on and off and

some minor tricks to improve its sensitivity and selectiveness.

Daimen had never developed a proper mind sense, and couldn’t identify other Open people on sight

like Zorian could. Even his empathy was crude and unsophisticated by Zorian’s standards.

“I suspected you might be like me,” Daimen said. “But then again, your actions were kind of strange

for someone who could sense people’s emotions like I could, and that gave me pause. It never even

occurred to me that your empathy might not work exactly the same as mine did. I still don’t

understand what went wrong in your case when my empathy was such a boon to me. Why didn’t you

say anything?”

“I did,” Zorian said. “Mother and Father said they would throw me in a madhouse if I didn’t shut up

about that topic.”

“Ah ha ha…” Daimen laughed nervously. “I’m sure they were just joking around. You are way too

sensitive about these things, Zorian.”

Zorian did not attempt to argue with him. Since their parents had always fawned on Daimen so

much, he had a very skewed image of them. There was probably no helping that.

“Look on the bright side, though,” Daimen continued, trying to change the topic. “Since you had no

preconceptions about your ability being empathy and thus limited to sensing emotions, you

developed it into something far more amazing. I’m really jealous of that, to be honest. I didn’t know

there was more to my ability until I met Orissa and the Taramatula.”

Hmm. If the Taramatula knew about Daimen’s innate mind magic talent, it was no wonder they were

so understanding about Orissa wanting to marry him. He was famous, good looking, a mage

prodigy and a natural mind mage? Truthfully, if Zorian was in Daimen’s place, he would be

wondering if Orissa ever actually loved him or was simply going after him out of sheer opportunism.

“What did Orissa want to talk to me about, anyway?” Zorian asked.

“Oh. Well, I think you kind of already gave her an answer to that,” Daimen said. “She wanted to see

if the mental ability you were using is the same one I have.”

“Ah, I see,” Zorian nodded. “The Taramatula are hoping it’s inheritable, I’m guessing.”

“Is it?” Daimen asked.

“Probably,” Zorian shrugged. “I’ve heard that abilities like that never just spring out of nowhere in a

child, and it’s a bit of a stretch that the two of us have the same ability through luck alone. There is

clearly some kind of inheritance thing going on, but it’s hard to say whether your children would be

guaranteed to inherit it.”

“A lot of bloodlines aren’t guaranteed for children to inherit in their raw state,” Daimen said. “There

are often artificial methods of ensuring inheritance involved, such as specialized potions and rituals. I

doubt the Taramatula will care much.”

Any further discussion was interrupted when one of Daimen’s teammates came up to them to notify

them the ritual was ready, and that they were only waiting for Daimen.

“Alright, we’ll continue with this topic some other time,” Daimen said. “For now, let’s focus on finally

tracking down that damn orb.”

- break -

Like many places, Green Hell had an extensive network of underground tunnels running beneath it.

Indeed, the local underworld was unusually complex, which helped explain why the area was so rich

in ambient mana and why it was so abundant in dangerous wildlife. Even if one limited themselves to

surface layers of the Dungeon, reasoning that Awan-Temti wouldn’t have wanted to descend too far,

that was a lot of tunnels to cover. Thus, when Daimen’s team presented them all with a three-

dimensional illusion of the local underground, Zorian could only stare at it in confusion. How the hell

does this information help them narrow down their search? They would still have to walk through

most of the area to cover all the tunnels reasonably close to the surface.

However, Daimen seemed to see something important in the floating image, because he soon

pointed his finger at five places on the map.

“Here, here, here, here and here,” he said, poking the illusion in five different places, causing it to

waver for a second before correcting itself. The spots looked completely random to Zorian. “We

should focus on these areas to start with.”

“I don’t understand,” Zorian complained to Zach. “On what basis is he picking those five places?”

He had been hoping that Zach, having decades of experience in adventuring, would see something

in Daimen’s choices that he missed. His hopes turned out to have been misplaced, however.

“No idea,” Zach told him. “That map is a total mess to me. He’s probably just bullshitting to make

himself look more knowledgeable and experienced. I used to do that a lot when I ended up in charge

of something. Never let your peons know you actually have no idea what you’re doing.”

“I can hear you two just fine, you know,” Daimen told them in an annoyed tone.

“I wasn’t trying to be quiet,” Zach pointed out.

Daimen didn’t reply. Instead he simply pointed them towards the nearest of the five places and

motioned for everyone to start moving.

They were only halfway to the first spot when Zorian suddenly stopped. He had been spamming Key

detection requests to his marker on a regular basis as they walked and now it actually reacted to

something.

He found the orb.

“It’s here,” Zorian said excitedly.

“What? What’s here?” Daimen asked in confusion.

“The orb, of course,” Zorian said. Was he intentionally being stupid? “It’s here, I can sense it.”

“Do you mean it’s right below us, or…?” asked Zach, speculatively looking at the ground beneath his

feet. Probably considering how best to excavate the huge amount of dirt between them and the

nearest tunnel.

“No, but close,” Zorian said, pointing towards the north-east.

The group stared in the indicated direction for a while, as if that was going to help them see the orb

through all the dirt and vegetation that was in the way.

“Is there anything notable in that direction?” Daimen asked Kirma. She was the one who kept

detailed maps of the region, stored in her lotus device.

She quickly consulted her device for an answer.

“Actually… yes, there is,” she said hesitantly. “There is a chameleon drake nesting ground over in

that direction. Because the place is so relatively prominent, it was one of the first places we

checked.”

“I remember now,” Daimen said. “Chassanah insisted we check it out. Said that of course the orb is in

the most dangerous place in the area, how could it be anywhere else?”

He pointed at the weathered old man who had advised Zorian caution earlier.

“And I was right, see?” Chassanah said. “We should have looked harder.”

“But I don’t understand,” Kirma protested. “We searched that place. There is nothing there.”

“We never actually set foot in the place, though,” Torun pointed out. “We just checked it out

remotely.”

“We were thorough,” Kirma insisted. “There was nothing there. Awan-Temti was traveling with his

entire entourage when he disappeared and was carrying a hefty supply train. We saw no evidence

that a group of that size perished there.”

“It’s been a long time since Awan-Temti walked the earth,” Torun said, shrugging. “And it’s possible

the fool got separated from his entourage and perished there alone. Maybe the orb is buried under

some rock in one of the caves, and is protected against divinations.”

“I… suppose,” Kirma reluctantly conceded. She seemed unwilling to admit she may have missed the

orb in her earlier search. She probably saw it as a blow against her personal pride.

A decision was made to make another attempt at searching the place. The group approached the

nesting ground as close as possible without provoking the chameleon drakes into swarming them

and then systematically scried the place.

The place was actually not that big. Neither the cenote itself nor the caves dug into its walls were

connected to the Dungeon, so there was only so much ground that their spells had to cover. Despite

that, no amount of divinations, remote scouts and other information gathering methods could find the

orb. There was no evidence of any kind of treasure there.

“It’s definitely there,” Zorian insisted stubbornly. He knew what his marker was telling him. “It’s right

there in that biggest cave near the bottom of the cenote – the one that looks natural instead of being

artificially dug up by the chameleon drakes.”

“We already searched that one a million times with everything we could think of,” Kirma said,

sounding very annoyed with him. “Torun even risked sending one of his rarer eyes in there, the one

that can see through solid objects. There is nothing there, okay!? Your legacy is malfunctioning.”

Zorian sighed. There was no point in arguing about this, anymore.

“I need to get physical access to that cave,” he told Zach. “I’m sure I can find it, but I need to be

actually there, not watching things through a divination screen or a remote sensor.”

“Got it,” Zach said, rising to his feet and dusting himself off. “I’ll deal with the lizards, you just stay

behind me and keep them from flanking me or something.”

“Not so fast, you two,” Daimen told them. “Do you honestly think we would just stay on the sidelines

and watch you either get horribly killed or claim the orb for yourselves? That’s a lose-lose

proposition. We came here together, and we’ll execute this assault together as well.”

“This is stupid,” Kirma complained.

“We’re doing it anyway,” Daimen said. “If Zorian says the orb is there, it’s there. However, let’s not

charge into the cenote like idiots. I’d rather induce them to swarm out and blunder into a trap. Here’s

what we’re going to do…”

- break -

In the depths of the Kothic jungle, a fierce battle was raging. On one side there were nearly a

hundred chameleon drakes charging in defense of their homes and young, and on the other side

was a group of 19 people that had brazenly thrown irritating gas into the cenote to flush them out.

Though the chameleon drakes looked brutish, they were not dumb. They knew they were being

provoked, but they also knew they had to answer this challenge. This wasn’t the first time someone

had tried to take their cenote habitat away from them, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Daimen’s group had set up a minefield between themselves and the cenote when they had provoked

the chameleon drakes, but they had underestimated their opponents. Rather than launch a frontal

charge at Daimen’s group, the chameleon drakes split their group into two halves and charged at

them in two wide arcs, aiming to hit their flanks from both directions.

One might think the drakes had spotted the trap and reacted accordingly, but Zorian could peer into

their minds and knew they hadn’t. Cold, hard experience had taught this particular group not to face

their enemies head on if they could avoid it, especially if they were human.

The two groups crashed into each other and the chameleon drakes came out for the worse in the

process. They were impressive beasts, fast and strong, but their strengths were most pronounced

when attacking from an ambush. Their virtual invisibility did not work well if they were constantly on

the move and the lightning-fast tongue attack they liked to use as an opening strike was less

effective on a creature that expected it.

It didn’t help that Daimen’s group had several powerful mages, including Zach.

With a practiced movement, Zorian fired a glittering orange star at the chameleon drake in front of

him. The large reptile reacted with impressive agility, throwing itself to the side to avoid the projectile

and folding its front claws over its face to protect its eyes from the imminent explosion. And the

explosion did come, just like the chameleon drake predicted, singeing its scales but not doing any

truly critical damage.

It landed right on its feet with the nimbleness of a housecat, its four conical eyes whirring around,

each in its own direction, in an attempt to reorient itself. Finally, it fixed its front two eyes on Zorian,

the other two eyes twitching about for any hint of an attack from behind and it opened its large,

toothy mouth wide open.

It was the mistake that Zorian had been waiting for. He launched a force lance at the chameleon

drake and then immediately followed it with a double-layered shield around himself, casting them so

quickly that it almost appeared as if he cast two spells simultaneously. The chameleon drake shot its

spear-like tongue at Zorian, punching through one layer of his shield but failing to penetrate the

second. Before it could retract its tongue for another go, however, the force lance hit it straight in the

throat through its open mouth, bypassing the tough scales that protected its body.

The drake dropped on the ground immediately, kicking and thrashing about like it was having a

seizure, kicking up plumes of dust in its death throes. Zorian spent a second to make sure it was

down for good and then turned his attention to the rest of the targets.

He was just in time to see Chassanah stumble over an ill-placed rock and fall to the ground some

distance away from him. His opponent, one of the slightly smaller chameleon drakes that only barely

reached 3 meters in length, immediately took advantage of this to try and pounce at him.

Fortunately, Zorian had his golems scattered through the entire group, and one was nearby. The

golem, devoid of self-preservation and acting under Zorian’s telepathic orders, launched itself at the

chameleon drake with a full-body tackle. It crashed into the chameleon drake’s flank, causing it to

veer off-course and giving Chassanah enough time to recover and get back to his feet.

“You okay, old man?” Zorian asked him, running up to him to make sure he didn’t hit his head in the

fall or something. The chameleon drake seemed to be busy slamming his golem repeatedly into the

ground, outraged that its interference had costed it its kill.

“I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head. “How embarrassing. Here I am, lecturing the younger

generation about the need for modesty and caution and whatnot, and then I make a stupid mistake

like this. Bah! It’s true as they say, you learn things all your life and still die a fool.”

Looking around the battlefield, Zorian realized that the chameleon drakes were getting beaten back

at every front. On one side, Orissa was using her bees to attack the sensitive eyes of the drakes,

making them flail around in panic as they attempted to dislodge such tiny opponents from

themselves. Daimen and other members of his team then finished off the blinded drakes by focusing

their fire on them one at a time. On the other, Zach disdained any sort of fancy tactics and simply

used a pair of floating black swords to slice any chameleon drake that came close to pieces. The

swords seemed to pass through the beasts’ tough hide without resistance, killing them instantly. The

drakes eventually grew fearful to even approach him, choosing instead to pursue other targets.

Soon, the chameleon drakes seemed to collectively realize that the confrontation wasn’t going well

for them and started to retreat. Amusingly, some of them chose to retreat directly through the

minefield that they had missed in the initial charge, which resulted in another couple of fatalities

among their number without Daimen’s group needing to do anything to make it happen. Only a few

died before the rest learned to stay clear of that area, however.

Taking stock of the situation after the battle, Zorian noted that no one in Daimen’s group died in the

fighting, so this could be safely described as a resounding victory. Even though things could have

gone a lot smoother than this, in his opinion.

However, there was a problem. While the chameleon drakes retreated, they did not flee entirely.

They simply withdrew towards the cenote and then stopped. They seemed unwilling to give up their

home, even if they knew they were beaten.

They started hissing loudly in their direction, puffing themselves up to look bigger and making

threatening movement towards them.

“Are… are they trying to intimidate us or something?” Daimen asked incredulously.

“I think so, yeah,” Zorian said.

“They lost a fight and now they’re resorting to threats instead? That’s amusingly outrageous,” Torun

said. “I guess there is no harm in trying, from their perspective. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, eh… it

was worth a try.”

The threatening display didn’t dissuade them from advancing, of course. The orb was down there, so

getting access to the cenote was a must. However, when they started moving towards the cenote

again, the chameleon drakes changed their behavior. They stopped trying to intimidate them and

instead threw their heads into the air and started to… wail.

Zorian did not know how to describe it. It wasn’t really a wail in the human sense, but the sound was

loud, repetitive and pitiful. And all the chameleon drakes were doing it in unison. It was like the entire

group in front of them was cursing the heavens for abandoning them.

“Damn, these things are actually making me feel sorry for them a little,” Daimen complained. “I kind

of feel like a villain here.”

“They’re not crying,” Zorian said, a terrible realization growing in the back of his head. “They’re

calling for help. Summoning assistance.”

“They’re what?” Daimen frowned. “Kirma, can you check–”

The entire group stumbled as a tremor shook the earth beneath them, centered on the cenote.

“What the hell was that!?” Daimen demanded. It wasn’t clear who he was talking to, but it was Kirma

who eventually answered, after consulting her lotus device.

“The water in the cenote,” she said. “It’s churning…”

Then Zorian felt it. Before, the cenote felt mostly dead to his senses, and even scrying from the

group failed to locate anything of interest. Now, however, Zorian could feel a mind dwelling there.

Something big, mean…

…and hungry.

“Okay, tactical retreat, tactical retreat,” Zorian said gesturing everyone to start retreating from the

cenote. He noticed that the chameleon drakes had stopped wailing and instead looked rather

expectant and… almost gleeful. “We have something seriously big and hostile coming up from there.

I think–”

He didn’t have time to think. Something huge and dark blue unfolded itself out of the cenote. At first

Zorian thought he was looking at some kind of animated tree or a giant sea anemone, but then the

‘branches’ stilled for a second and it became obvious what he was looking at.

It was a hydra. A really, really big one. Eight draconic-looking heads observed the world around it

with interest, eventually zeroing in on the group of humans in the distance. Its eight mouths opened

up slightly, exposing rows and rows of dagger-like teeth, and began to salivate.

“Oh,” said Zach happily in the resulting silence, his eyes shining with a fire that Zorian rarely saw in

him. “Looks like I might have some actual fun here after all!”

As if reacting to his statement, the hydra opened all eight of its mouths and let loose a deafening

roar.

Chapter 069

Ruin

Zorian could tell right away that the hydra in front of them was not normal. First of all, it was too big.

He was no expert on hydras, but he knew that even the largest ones didn’t grow more than 10

meters in length. This one seemed to be at least twice that size, if the size of its heads was of any

indication. Then there was the matter of how suddenly it had appeared on his senses. There was no

way he could miss something like that with even casual inspection, nevermind the detailed sweep he

had done on the cenote. The mind he was currently sensing was one of the most distinctive things

he had ever witnessed through his mind sense, and it should have drawn his attention immediately.

The hydra seemed to have nine minds – one for each head, and a ninth one that served as a kind

of… overmind, for the lack of a better term. The individual heads seemed to be somehow suborned

to the main mind of the hydra, which was probably in charge of coordinating the heads towards an

overarching goal. It was kind of fascinating.

Then the hydra pointed all eight of its heads at them and roared. If they were dealing with a normal

hydra, this would just be a cheap intimidation tactic. Instead, the roar was infused with potent wind

magic, battering the whole group with a powerful gust of wind. Zach and Zorian simply glued their

feet to the ground with non-structured magic, and Daimen protected most of his team with an

impressively quick force wall spell. Sadly, that still left four people at the mercy of the incoming wind

attack. Of those four, one was Chassanah, who simply stabbed his staff into the ground and held on

to it with pure physical strength. Zorian was impressed – the old man looked kind of gaunt, but there

seemed to be surprising strength hidden under his wiry frame. As for the other three, they were not

as quick on their feet and merely released a chorus of short cries and screams as they were blown

off their feet and sent tumbling into the distance. They didn’t die, but they wouldn’t be getting up any

time soon.

Zach was the one who handled the surprise attack the best. While everyone else, even Zorian, was

scrambling to withstand the roar somehow, Zach was already casting some kind of complex spell in

retaliation. He transformed the entire area in front of him into a field of roughly-hewn stone blades

before the windstorm even had time to die down, all of them wreathed in ominous red light. Then he

slammed both of his hands into the earth before him, sending them all hurtling towards the hydra.

The monster took one look at the approaching cloud of stony death, its many eyes widening in

surprise and fear, then immediately cut its roar short and withdrew all of its heads back into the

cenote. The chameleon drakes, still arranged around the cenote, were not as quick. The rain of

blades slammed into the area around the cenote, burying themselves deep into the jungle soil and

impaling through any chameleon drakes that were unfortunate enough to be in the way. The lucky

ones were slain on the spot by the stone shards. The less fortunate ones wailed like wounded pigs

as the red light that infused the blades spread throughout their bodies and started liquefying their

insides.

The surviving chameleon drakes lost any semblance of group cohesion and simply scattered in all

directions, abandoning their former home, the pained cries of their dying brethren motivating them to

keep going until they had left the range of Zorian’s mind sense entirely.

Zach wasn’t really paying attention to the chameleon drakes, though. They were just collateral

damage. The moment he had launched the rain of flesh-dissolving blades at the hydra, before he

had even known whether it would hit its target or not, he was already casting another spell. Thus, the

moment the hydra withdrew back into the cenote, Zach sent a pair of pale blue balls of magical

energy after it.

Zorian would later find out that the projectiles were meant to freeze the water at the bottom of the

cenote, hopefully imprisoning the hydra in a block of ice. Unfortunately for that idea, the hydra didn’t

retreat back into the water. It simply ducked out of the path of Zach’s attack and then decided to

jump out of the cenote and charge at the group.

Seeing the giant hydra jump out of the cenote with the same ease a housecat jumps onto the kitchen

table really drove in the point that they were dealing with something entirely out of the ordinary.

Normal hydras were ‘just’ highly venomous and capable of impressive tissue regeneration,

especially in regards to their heads. They were not known to be especially fast or agile out of the

water.

The charge of the hydra was unstoppable. Daimen and his team launched a constant stream of

different attack spells at the hydra, all in vain. Every projectile they launched was intercepted by the

hydra’s many heads before it could hit its main body, inflicting damage that was soon undone by the

hydra’s natural regeneration ability. A hydra’s regeneration was most potent in regards to its heads,

even capable of overcoming fire damage and other things that usually foiled regenerators, but its

main body was a lot more vulnerable. Daimen’s group clearly knew this, and thus aimed for the main

body with every attack they made, but the hydra was too quick and canny for this to work.

Zorian refrained from joining in on the attack. If Daimen’s whole group couldn’t break through, his

addition would likely be a meaningless waste of mana. He simply focused on figuring out how its

mind works, conserved his mana and repositioned his golems so he could respond in time upon

spotting an appropriate opening. Fortunately, the hydra seemed focused primarily on Zach, having

identified him as its biggest threat.

Well, perhaps it was a bit callous of Zorian to say that… but in his defense, Zach looked quite happy

at the fact that he had attracted the hydra’s ire with his earlier spell. Seemingly ignoring the massive

hydra thundering towards him, Zach cast two lengthy spells. The first created a large ball of soft

white light that just hung there above his head, seemingly doing nothing at all. The other produced

no visible effects, but Zorian’s magic perception was pretty good by now and he could sense eight

magical constructs suddenly springing into existence around Zach.

Soon, the hydra was close enough to Zach to attack. At that moment, all eight heads struck, surging

towards Zach like coiled springs. Somewhere behind him, Zorian could hear some member of

Daimen’s team scream out a warning to Zach, as if that was going to do him any good now. At the

same time, though, the eight concealed spell constructs surrounding Zach also sprang into motion,

surging forward to meet the hydra’s heads. Eight spectral shark jaws faded into existence, already in

the process of biting down towards the attacking heads. The hydra, suddenly realizing it had

blundered into a trap, tried to abort its attack.

It was too late. It was too big and had too much momentum. Whatever magic gave it such abnormal

speed and agility had its limits. The spectral jaws slammed shut, slicing through hydra scale and

muscle alike with ridiculous ease. Panicked, the hydra seemed to dip into some secret reserves of

strength that allowed it to quickly extricate most of its heads before they were bitten off.

Most, but not all. One of the spectral jaws caught its target particularly well and then kept biting

down. With a loud crunch, the jaws bit right through the hydra head’s spine, separating it from the

main body.

The hydra’s remaining seven heads roared in pain and anger, the headless neck of its eighth head

flailing around madly and spraying blood everywhere around it. This wasn’t a wound its regeneration

could fix – the head wasn’t damaged, it was just plain gone. It would regrow in time, but this process

would happen too slowly to have any influence on the outcome of this battle.

Zorian expected that Zach would now use the mysterious ball of white light floating above his head,

but the spell remained inert. Instead, he once again created a field of stone blades in front of him.

Before he could launch it at the hydra, however, it suddenly retracted its heads closer to its main

body and wrapped itself into something resembling a scaly, fleshy sphere. Then it disappeared into

thin air.

When it appeared again, it was suddenly next to Daimen and his group.

“Of course it can teleport as well,” Zorian mumbled to himself.

It should have been more surprising. Teleportation magic was usually very impractical for large

creatures, because the costs increased explosively with the volume of the thing being teleported.

Instead, it almost seemed appropriate. Zorian by now strongly suspected that they were dealing with

some kind of ancient guardian from Awan-Temti’s time, back when gods still meddled in mortal

affairs and granted potent powers to those that caught their fancy. It was to be expected that

something like this would be equipped with strange and potent abilities.

He pointed at the air in front of him and a large, semi-transparent disc of force materialized in the air

before him. Zorian hopped onto it and flew off in the direction of the hydra. He was fine with letting

Zach face the hydra on his own, but Daimen and the people around him would probably need his

help to stay alive.

Chassanah, who was still near Zorian by this point, copied his trick and followed after him on a force

disc of his own.

The sudden teleportation, while very impressive from a creature that big, seemed to take a lot out of

the hydra. Instead of striking immediately, it took a few seconds to uncoil and catch its breath before

attacking again. This blunted some of the shock among Daimen’s group and allowed them to

organize themselves somewhat before it struck.

When it did strike, however, it was devastating. A layer of shields was erected in front of the group,

but it was smashed into rapidly fading smoke and motes of light in under a second. Desperate to

keep the hydra away from himself and his men, Daimen conjured a giant ectoplasmic version of

himself, which then physically tackled the hydra. The giant ghostly Daimen snatched two of the

hydra’s heads with its ghostly hands and tried to wrestle it to the ground. This didn’t quite work, but it

did keep three of the hydra’s heads too busy to attack anyone else and stopped it from moving freely

on the battlefield, so it wasn’t really a failure either.

Kirma fired a swarm of drill-like projectiles at the hydra, each of them unerringly homing in on the

hydra’s sensitive points – eyes, mouth, ears, nostrils. This was rather remarkable, as most homing

spells were not nearly that precise in their aiming. Especially since the miniature drills were moving

with incredible speeds, which would further complicate homing functions of most spells. Zorian could

only imagine the lotus machine she carried was somehow responsible for that feat.

Zorian would have thought Orissa would be entirely useless in this kind of fight, since the hydra was

unlikely to even notice bee stings. However, she surprised him. Her bees suddenly became encased

in an orange aura that caused the air around them to ripple from the intense heat emanating off

them. From that point on, they flew faster and burned all that they touched, like a thousand tiny flying

furnaces. Occasionally she would make a quick gesture, causing some of the bees to detonate,

creating tiny but intense explosions that charred the hydra’s tough, scaly skin wherever they touched

it. And because the bees were so tiny, they could simply fly past the more durable, regenerating

heads and strike at the hydra’s main body.

Zorian also added some pressure on the hydra himself, launching a force lance, an incinerating

beam and two severing discs at the hydra as he flew towards the battle site. He didn’t really think he

would inflict real damage with that, but every second the hydra spent on dealing with those attacks

was a second it couldn’t spare on dealing with Daimen and the others.

Despite all of these efforts, the hydra still had seven heads left, and it was hard to keep them all

constantly busy. Zorian had to sacrifice one of his golems to save Orissa from having her head bitten

off when the hydra finally figured out where the annoying burning, exploding bees were coming from.

Torun also sacrificed one of his larger eyes to survive an attack, causing the eye in question to burst

into a copious amount of translucent slime that formed a thin, rubbery dome around him. The head

that was targeting him bit down on the dome and, despite its apparent flimsiness, failed to punch

through. The dome bent and stretched, but did not break.

Unfortunately, not everyone targeted by the hydra had such a life-saving method prepared. One of

the mages was bitten nearly in half before anyone could do anything about it, dying on the spot. The

other had his arm pumped full of venom when the hydra grazed it with its jaws. Daimen immediately

cut off the limb in question and then directed one of the mages to teleport him and all the other

wounded away from the battlefield.

Additionally, one of the men tried to circle the hydra and attack it from behind, only to have his legs

shattered in response when the hydra revealed that its tail was also a potent weapon, able to strike

at things with great force and speed. Zorian didn’t begrudge the man his agonized screaming – he

still remembered how much it had hurt when the grey hunter had done the same to him.

Finally, Daimen found a good moment to spring his trap. The hydra managed to get through some of

the defensive spells and sent one of its heads towards Daimen, who threw a mundane-looking red

projectile at it. Sensing no great danger, the hydra simply bit down on the projectile to make it go

away… shattering the potion bottle hidden inside the projectile right inside its mouth.

The hydra as a whole flinched back as it sensed the alchemical mixture pour down its throat,

stopping all of its attacks. The affected head released an agonizing scream as it rapidly began to

transform into glittering white crystal. Its natural regeneration was unable to halt the process and it

seemed inevitable that the entire hydra would rapidly crystalize and turn into a lifeless, glittering

statue.

Without hesitation, one of the hydra’s other heads bit down on the neck of the rapidly crystalizing

head and tore it off in a shower of blood and gore. Now down to six heads, but safe from the

crystallization poison, the hydra gave Daimen a murderous look and prepared for another charge.

Unfortunately for the hydra, this was when Zach, Zorian and Chassanah reached the battlefield and

the tide shifted. Chassanah circled the battlefield, casting barrier after barrier and preventing anyone

else from being killed or seriously wounded by the hydra’s multitude of attacks. Zorian had figured

out enough of its mind to start messing with its aim and timing, and occasionally launched combat

spells at it as well when he spotted a good opening.

Then there was Zach. Unlike Zorian and Chassanah, he didn’t bother with a force disc – when the

hydra teleported away from him, he simply jumped into the air and flew off towards the new

battlefield like it was the most normal thing in the world, his eight spectral jaws in tow. The

mysterious white orb was still floating over his head, too. As he traveled, another three identical orbs

joined the one he made earlier, equally passive for now. When he finally reached the hydra, the

spectral jaws that trailed behind him surged forward, biting towards it, and it was instantly put on the

defensive.

Naturally, this was when the hydra pulled another one of its surprise abilities. It roared again,

breathing clouds of bright green gas in every direction. Everyone was forced to temporarily retreat

from what was likely some kind of poison mist, giving the hydra some much needed respite.

The battle continued. The hydra lost another head, then two. The hydra managed to rob Zach of all

of his spectral jaws and wounded another one of Daimen’s men. Zorian managed to hit the hydra’s

main body with a shredder sphere, inflicting a lasting wound on it. All of his golems ended up being

reduced to scrap, however. Daimen’s ectoplasmic giant was dispersed, but Daimen managed to

slice off its tail in response. At first glance, it seemed like they were winning and that victory was only

a matter of time… but the truth was that they were steadily running out of mana. The hydra might be

on the verge of collapse, but so were they. Even Zach’s seemingly inexhaustible mana reserves

were starting to run out.

They didn’t want to retreat. At least one person was dead, many had suffered serious injuries, and

they had used a lot of expensive resources during the course of the battle. On top of that, while the

hydra was grievously wounded, it would recover quickly if it was left alone. Far faster than their

group would. If they fled and came back later, it would probably be back in top health, with all of its

heads back.

The hydra didn’t want to retreat either. It had only three of its heads left, but it knew it could recover

from this setback very quickly. Its enemies were visibly weakening, it just had to keep going and

outlast them. Besides, turning its back to such dangerous enemies was lunacy – all of its instincts

were telling it that doing so would be a mistake. Better to risk fighting to the bitter end than be cut

down from the back as it fled.

In the end, though, they had all underestimated Zach again. Sometime during the fighting, Zach had

created another white ball to join the four he had prepared earlier. He then spent the rest of the

battle arranging the five balls around the battlefield and trying to maneuver the hydra into the center

of their formation. Although no one except Zach knew what they were supposed to do, his

performance was impressive enough that everyone did their best to help him with this. The hydra

was wary of the balls in the beginning, but as time passed and they remained little more than

glowing ornaments, it began to mostly ignore them.

Eventually, Daimen instructed his men to feign a panicked rout and the hydra recklessly followed

after them, stepping right in the middle of the resulting formation. In that very moment, Zach made a

strange hand sign and the balls activated. A web of brightly shining threads unfolded out of them,

reaching across empty space to intertwine with each other and trap the hydra under a dome of

delicate-looking threads.

The hydra experimentally brushed against the dome of threads and hissed in pain as they lacerated

its flesh like a thousand interlocking razors.

And then the dome began to shrink.

Everyone watched, exhausted, as the giant hydra futilely fought to break out of the dome of razor

threads closing in on it. It bellowed in rage again and again, defiant to the very end. Finally, with its

entire body mangled and only one head left intact, it once again curled into a ball and teleported out

of the sphere.

Unlike the first teleport, this one did not take it very far. In fact, the hydra appeared right next to the

rapidly shrinking sphere, having transported itself just far enough to escape immediate death. It

swayed on its feet as it unrolled, looking as if was going to keel over dead at any moment. However,

before that could happen, it lifted its head one last time and gave Daimen a bitter, murderous look.

Though it was actually Zach that was responsible for its current predicament, it had been chasing

after Daimen and his men when it blundered into the trap, and it viewed him as the primary culprit of

its current predicament.

Through his magic perception, Zorian suddenly detected a massive buildup of magic in the hydra. In

fact, virtually everyone seemed to have detected it, considering how they flinched in surprise. Before

anyone could do anything, the hydra opened its last remaining mouth and fired a beam of pitch black

energy straight at Daimen.

Eyes widening, Daimen reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, unassuming mirror, thrusting

it in front of himself as some kind of shield.

The beam hit. The mirror shattered as if hit by a bomb, the sound of its destruction reverberating

throughout the surroundings with unnatural loudness. Daimen himself was blown back like a rag doll,

the arm that held the mirror clearly broken. The black beam was gone, however, as if it had never

existed in the first place.

For a full second, the hydra seemed to stare at the scene. Then, it shuddered for a moment and

collapsed to the side, dead.

The battle was over.

- break -

The immediate aftermath of the fight was, in many ways, more nerve-wracking for Zorian than the

actual fight had been. After checking up on everyone, it turned out that only one person had actually

died in the fighting – Goliri Ardat, the guy that got bitten in half by the hydra near the start of the

fighting. However, Goliri was best friends with one of the other men in the group, Alachi Gotrum.

Alachi was devastated and furious that his friend had died, and he felt the primary person

responsible for his death was Zorian. It had been Zorian who had insisted that they had to gain

access to the deepest cave in the cenote, after all. The man had kept hurling insults at Zorian for

over five minutes, and even tried to attack him physically before Zach intervened.

Unfortunately, that’s when two more members of Daimen’s team spoke up in support of Alachi. The

guy who had lost his arm due to the hydra’s poison and the man who’d had his legs shattered by its

tail were also very unhappy. They were essentially crippled, and they likewise blamed Zorian for it.

Likely Zach as well, but they were too intimidated by his combat prowess to piss him off. Zorian, on

the other hand, looked like an easier target.

During all of that, Daimen tried to play peacemaker and calm his men down, but he never expressed

any support for Zorian. This pissed off Zorian more than it probably should have. He knew that this

was his team and that he couldn’t just categorically side with Zorian just because he was his brother,

but it left a bitter taste in his mouth that Daimen hadn’t said so much as a single word in his defense.

Instead, it was Chassanah who eventually sided with him. The old man seemed to have taken a

liking to Zorian.

This started another round of accusations concerning Zorian’s obvious proficiency in mind magic,

with Alachi claiming Zorian was clearly mind controlling people and that police should get involved.

The moment police involvement was mentioned, Daimen seemed to shift tracks in his methods of

resolving the conflict. He stopped the discussion, dragged Alachi to the side and erected a privacy

ward around the two of them. Zorian had no idea what was said between them, but Alachi no longer

bothered him after this.

As for the two crippled mages, Daimen told them that their wounds weren’t necessarily

unrecoverable with the right treatments and promised to pay as much as he had to in order to get

them back in top shape. This seemed to mellow them out a lot, and they no longer made any fuss

either.

With that particular crisis somewhat resolved, they could finally inspect their gains. They dropped off

most of the wounded at the nearest hospital (Daimen decided to just put his broken arm in a cast

and return to the field) and gated back to the site of the battle.

The first gain was actually the dead hydra. Daimen and his team were quite excited about its

potential worth. The sums involved weren’t much to Zorian, but that was just the time loop messing

with his sense of proportion when it came to money. If they could really find an appropriate buyer for

this thing, the hydra could get Daimen and his team enough money to turn a lot of heads.

The dead chameleon drakes would also be gathered and sold, although their value was far less than

that of a hydra. Especially since Zach’s spells had really made a mess out of a lot of them, making

many of the corpses borderline useless.

As they walked around, inspecting chameleon drake corpses, Zorian heard Daimen complaining to

Orissa about his broken mirror. Apparently it was a divine artifact that Daimen had found on one of

his expeditions and decided to keep. It was supposed to be utterly indestructible, and had saved

Daimen’s life many times in the past, and now it was gone. He was thoroughly heartbroken over

that, and Orissa pointing out that at least he was alive thanks to its sacrifice didn’t seem to cheer him

up much.

“Ready, little Kazinski?” Torun said, slapping Zorian on the back a little harder than was necessary.

“Let’s go get that orb that you’re so sure is down there, eh?”

Zorian said nothing. Before descending into the depths of the cenote, the group carefully checked

the place again in order to see if there were any more giant magical hydras or worse things lurking

nearby. They found no evidence of such, but they also failed to figure out how they had missed the

hydra in the first place, which was worrying. The water at the bottom was frozen as a result of the

two projectiles that Zach had sent down here at the start of the fight, but there was no evidence of

any kind of underwater cave the hydra could have hidden itself in. It was like the hydra simply

popped into existence out of nowhere when the chameleon drakes called for it.

When they finally entered the cave Zorian had pointed out, the orb was nowhere to be found. Zorian

expected as much, though, and wasn’t really worried.

“Can you still sense it?” Daimen asked anxiously. He was probably a bit desperate to get some

tangible results from gaining access to this place, so that he could justify the losses he suffered to

get here… both to himself and to others.

“I can,” Zorian confirmed. He walked towards the far end of the cave and jabbed his finger at the

empty air in front of him. “It’s here. It’s at this exact spot, even.”

He waved his hand through the air where he sensed the orb and it passed through it without

resistance.

“Yet I can’t actually see it, or even touch it,” Zorian added. “How curious.”

Everyone who had even the slightest amount of expertise in divinations, or detection magic in

general, immediately gathered around the spot, poking, staring and casting magic at it. After ten

minutes of that, Daimen finally got a result.

“I can’t believe this,” Daimen said, running his hand through his hair in annoyance.

“You have something?” Kirma asked hopefully.

“It’s a hidden world,” Daimen said.

“A what?” Zorian asked, having never encountered that term before.

“A pocket dimension, like the one you think Silverlake is hiding in,” Zach told him. “They are normally

almost impossible to find unless you know exactly what to look for. Thus, some people call them

hidden worlds.”

“So this spot that little Kazinski has pointed out…?” Torun asked hesitantly.

“An entrance to the… pocket dimension where the orb resides,” Daimen said, giving Zorian a

complex look. “Damnit. All of Awan-Temti’s other belongings are probably there too. No wonder we

hadn’t found any trace of his group in all this time. We would have never found this without Zorian,

even if we had spent years combing this place.”

“But we did have him, and thus the expedition is saved,” Torun said with a careless shrug. “What are

you being so gloomy about?”

“What indeed,” Daimen mumbled.

“Anyway, now we just have to figure out how to break through this invisible door thing and we’ll be

free to loot Awan-Temti’s tomb to our hearts’ content, yes?” Torun asked.

“Yes, but I’d like to point out that this is probably where the giant magical hydra had come from,”

Chassanah butted in. “What if there are more of them inside? What if there are worse things waiting

for us there? We shouldn’t be reckless.”

“Yes, Chassanah is right,” Daimen nodded. “We lost too much here as it is. I want to hire more

fighters before we try to set foot there.”

“I’d like to stay here for a while and study the entrance point for a bit,” Zorian said, frowning.

“Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

“Fine,” Daimen sighed. “But don’t do anything before consulting me! Look, but don’t touch.”

Zorian nodded. Over the next two hours he scrutinized the pocket dimension entrance point while

paying attention to the way his marker reacted to it. He also asked Daimen to teach him whatever

spells he had used to confirm the presence of a pocket dimension. Daimen mumbled something

about how he would normally charge an arm and a leg for a confidential magic like that, but taught

him the spells anyway.

After two hours had passed, he was finally certain of his conclusions. He called Daimen over and

asked him for permission to ‘do something’.

“Something?” Daimen said warily.

“Something,” Zorian nodded.

“And if I refuse, you and Zach are going to come back here when my back is turned and do it

anyway,” he surmised.

“Well…” Zorian hesitated.

“Absolutely, yeah,” Zach immediately confirmed.

Zorian gave him an annoyed glance. Not that he disagreed with his fellow time traveler, far from it,

but he could have been more diplomatic about it.

Daimen cupped his face in his hand for a moment. Perhaps he was imagining things, but Zorian

thought he heard a brief prayer for patience directed to one of the silent divinities.

“Just tell me what you want to do, okay?” Daimen finally said.

“I want to think we’ve misread the situation,” Zorian said. “It’s not that the orb of the first emperor is

hidden away in a pocket dimension. The pocket dimension is the orb of the first emperor.”

Daimen gave him a blank look. Zorian took this as an indication he should keep going.

“I agree with you that we’re dealing with a pocket dimension,” Zorian said. “But my marker is quite

insistent that the dimensional anchor we’re looking at is not just an entrance to a pocket dimension.

It is the very orb we’re looking for. This may sound a little crazy but–”

“You think the orb is a portable hidden realm,” Daimen surmised.

“Yes,” Zorian nodded. “I think this entrance we’re looking at is simply how the orb looks when it is…

deployed.”

“I see,” Daimen said speculatively. “And you think you can collapse it back into an actual orb?”

“I’m willing to try, at least,” Zorian said. “Though you should probably get yourself and your team out

of the cenote before I make the attempt. Just in case.”

After a few seconds, Daimen turned towards his team, who had been silently listening to the

conversation, and told them to establish a defensive perimeter around the pocket dimension

entrance and a fallback point outside the cave. It seemed he had no intention of letting him and Zach

try this on their own.

Zorian clacked his tongue unhappily. If things went south again, he had no doubt that most of these

people would blame him for everything again. Well to hell with them, he was still doing this.

The moment Daimen announced that everything was prepared and that he could begin, he cupped

his hand below the invisible dimensional anchor and tried to connect to the orb with his marker. It

took some tries, but he eventually succeeded – the surrounding space rippled like hot summer air for

a moment after which something resembling a glass globe materialized in the air and plopped down

onto Zorian’s waiting palm.

Orb of the first emperors: obtained.

After a second of shocked silence, everyone rushed forward, uncomfortably crowding Zorian’s

personal space in order to take a look at the artifact.

The orb in Zorian’s hand looked… interesting. The orb was a perfect sphere of crystal-clear glass,

completely unmarred by the passage of time. Running his fingers over it, Zorian could not feel even

the slightest scratch on its surface. Seemingly encased inside the glass was a ruined palace,

partially destroyed and overgrown with trees, vines and other vegetation. The palace and the trees

were extremely detailed and lifelike, to the point that Zorian could count the individual leaves on the

trees if he focused on them long enough. It reminded Zorian of one of those novelty snow globes

that Cyorian merchants liked to sell, the ones that had high-quality models of famous buildings

encased in the glass.

Eventually Zorian handed the orb to Zach, if only so people would crowd around him instead of

Zorian in order to get a good look at the orb.

“That palace… it’s not just a model, is it?” Zach said, sounding fascinated. “It’s a real thing,

contained inside the orb.”

“Obviously,” Orissa said. “Why would it be a ruin otherwise?”

“So Shutur-Tarana made himself a portable palace to carry around with him at all times?” Zach

asked rhetorically. “I like it.”

“Yes, now imagine just how much stuff could be stored there,” Torun said happily. “Ah, little Kazinski,

I forgive you for everything. You’re the best thing to have happened to this team.”

Although Zorian was dying to study the orb in more detail, he had reluctantly decided to leave the

orb in Daimen’s hands for now. Trying to take it away would probably spark another fight and it

wasn’t like he had enough time to truly devote himself to its study right now. The attack on the

Ibasan base beneath Cyoria was fast approaching, which meant that both Zach and Zorian would be

forced to devote the majority of their energies into that for the next couple of days.

“I have to say this whole thing makes me feel very conflicted,” Zach said as they left the group.

“Why?” Zorian asked curiously.

“Well, on one hand, we only found the orb so quickly because Daimen pointed us at the right spot to

start at,” Zach said. “So if we ever get out of the time loop, the right thing to do would probably be tell

him how to get it as a thanks for his help.”

“But?” Zorian prompted.

“I really like the idea of having my own portable palace,” Zach said with a dreamy grin.

Zorian snorted derisively. “You shouldn’t get excited just yet. For all we know the ruins really are full

of slumbering giant hydras or something.”

“That just makes me more excited,” Zach said. “That thing was a great opponent. Clearing a whole

nest of them would be amazing.”

Oh, right. For a moment he had forgotten who he was talking with.

They spent the rest of the way home arguing about what the best setup for a modern portable

palace would look like. The main point of contention was that Zach wanted to make an arena full of

actual monsters to fight with, whereas Zorian argued that sophisticated training dummies were better

because they were less likely to break out of their containment and rampage throughout the entire

place.

“It’s just not the same,” Zach complained, shaking his head sadly.

In the end they had to agree to disagree on the issue.

- break -

All the preparations were complete. Soldiers were recruited, human mercenaries and aranea hired,

golems made, wild monsters dominated into serving as combat support, additional equipment

bought and several limited combat exercises performed. The scale of the operation was sufficiently

big that the authorities had sent a team to investigate what was happening, requiring some quick

mind magic and forged documents to avert disaster. It helped that many Houses had small (or not so

small, in some cases) private armies to protect their interests, and that many of these Houses had

estates in or around Cyoria, which made their group stand out a lot less than it might otherwise.

All that was left to do now was to wait for Quatach-Ichl to leave for Ulquaan Ibasa so they could

make their move. There was some worry about that, as Quatach-Ichl didn’t seem to be getting ready

to leave. Xvim had raised the issue that they might have tipped Quatach-Ichl off somehow, and a

fierce discussion sprung up about whether to go ahead with the assault anyway if that was the case.

Thankfully, the question turned out to be irrelevant in the end – Quatach-Ichl still left on schedule,

and the mission could proceed.

The first task was simple: kidnap Sudomir, hopefully neutralizing the entire Iasku Mansion in the

process. In order to do that, though, they had to lure the man out of his nigh-unassailable home.

Thus, Zach and Zorian stole a pair of fancy red robes from the Cult of the World Dragon and

teleported to Knyazov Dveri, where they proceeded to smash up store fronts, set several

warehouses on fire and used alteration to call out Sudomir as a ‘traitor to the Esoteric Order of the

Celestial Dragon’. Zorian also used his mind magic to guide a herd of wild boars directly into the

town square, after which he released his control over them and let them run amok as they pleased.

The city guard tried to stop them, of course. They were actually pretty brutal about it, going so far as

to have snipers try to pick them off from the rooftops, despite the fact that Zach and Zorian clearly

avoided killing anyone themselves. Still, they were barely a challenge. Zach and Zorian simply

knocked them out or otherwise incapacitated them, and then continued with their extended

provocation.

After a while they stopped with the attack and left. This was partially because they were afraid

Sudomir might opt not to show up if he thought the danger had not yet passed, but it was also

because there was a chance the city authorities would call in Eldemar’s military if things went on

long enough.

It took nearly five hours for Sudomir to show up in the city, upon which he was greeted by irate shop

owners and city officials, demanding an explanation and some kind of compensation. Not even the

twelve dangerous-looking, grim-faced body guards that followed after him everywhere could make

them pause.

Zach and Zorian observed for a while and then struck like a lightning bolt. Sudomir himself got

incapacitated early in the fight and the twelve bodyguards he had brought with him turned out to be

decidedly average and unable to deal with them. Especially since they weren’t trying not to kill

anyone this time.

“I’m glad the kidnapping went off without a problem,” Alanic told them when they dragged Sudomir

back to their base, “but did you really have to cut off his arms?”

“Don’t look at me,” Zach protested. “It was Zorian’s idea.”

“He’s a dangerous necromancer,” Zorian defended himself. “I couldn’t risk him hitting us with some

nasty piece of soul magic in the middle of the battle and this was the quickest way I knew of stopping

that from happening. He said he was hard to kill so I figured that he wouldn’t die from blood loss.”

“I can’t believe my previous selves thought you weren’t brutal enough,” Alanic mumbled under his

breath. “And why is he not unconscious? I thought we agreed you’d knock him out before bringing

him here?”

“We couldn’t knock him out,” Zach admitted. “We tried five different drugs on him, and none of them

worked.”

“Though he did pretend to be unconscious after we hit him with the fifth one,” Zorian pointed out.

“Zach wanted to try knocking him out ‘the old fashioned way’ by hitting him in the head with a rock,

but I vetoed that. So we just glued his mouth shut, tied his legs together, put a bag over his head

and brought him over.”

“I see,” Alanic said, looking in the direction of Sudomir’s brand new prison cell with a frown. “I

wonder what he did to himself to get such resilience.”

“Well, you’ll have plenty of time to find out,” Zach shrugged. “Later, though. We should be starting

the assault on the gate now, yes?”

“Not yet, no,” Alanic said, shaking his head. “Let’s ask Sudomir a few questions concerning the

Ibasan base. He might know some crucial detail about its defenses or some such.”

Both Zach and Zorian were anxious to launch the assault as soon as possible, both because that

would give the researchers more time to study the gate if they succeeded and because the longer

they waited, the bigger the chance the Ibasans would realize what was coming and raise the alarm.

However, Alanic’s suggestion made a lot of sense and he knew more about these sort of mass

engagements than they did. If he thought a few more hours spent interrogating Sudomir wouldn’t

doom the operation, he was probably right.

- break -

The interrogation turned out to be fairly mundane and unexciting. Sudomir was surprisingly calm and

polite for someone who had been brutally attacked in broad daylight, de-armed and then carried off

for mind magic assisted interrogation. It didn’t even take all that much mind magic to make him tell

the truth. However, he also did not seem to know anything terribly useful about the layout and

defenses of the Ibasan base. Sudomir and the Ibasans may have been cooperating closely with

each other, but neither side fully trusted the other, and a lot of things were kept secret between

them.

Eventually the three of them ran out of questions to ask, much sooner than they expected they

would. Well, they ran out of questions related to the Ibasan base, anyway. Rather than stop, Alanic

simply decided to expand the scope of the questioning beyond that topic. This wasn’t exactly what

they agreed on, but Zorian said nothing for now. He could sense that Alanic’s questions were all

building up to something. Some question that Alanic desperately wanted answered.

“Why are you gathering so many souls in your mansion?” Alanic eventually asked Sudomir. “What

on earth do you need half a million souls for?”

Ah, so that was what was bothering him…

“W-What?” asked Sudomir, sounding shocked for the first time since the questioning began. “How

do you know that?”

Alanic gestured towards Zorian, who immediately launched a mental assault on Sudomir’s mind,

forcing him to answer the question.

“Ghhhk!” Sudomir grunted, grinding his teeth as he fought against the compulsion. “Damn it, that’s

not… It’s… I need it…”

“For what?” Alanic pushed.

“For the wraith bombs,” Sudomir ground out eventually.

“Wraith bombs?” Zach asked curiously. “As in, you pack a wraith into a bomb and throw it at

people?”

“Ha ha, yes! Yes!” Sudomir said, suddenly breaking into hysterical laughter. He was no longer

fighting against Zorian’s mental compulsion for some reason, as if he realized there was no way he

could win there and decided to just give them exactly what they want. “Not just one wraith though!

Hundreds! Thousands even! And you don’t throw them at people. No, no… you throw them at cities.”

“What?” Zach asked, frowning.

“Wraiths can multiply,” Alanic said quietly. “Give a wraith some time and lots of victims, and it will

make another wraith out of every human whose soul it consumes.”

“Yes, exactly!” Sudomir said, nodding furiously. “Just think of what would happen if you dumped

thousands of these things in the middle of a major city. Unless the outbreak is contained

immediately, the whole city would be overwhelmed in a matter of hours! Only the Triumvirate Church

has enough experts in ghost fighting to counter a wraith outbreak after it gathers some steam, and

they were decimated in the Weeping. If I had enough wraith bombs in my possession, Eldemar

would have to appease me. They’d have to…”

There was a brief silence during which Sudomir seemed to get lost in his own world and everyone

else was processing what he just said.

“You’d have to use this wraith bomb of yours on at least one city before anyone took your threat

seriously,” Zorian eventually pointed out.

“Yes, of course,” Sudomir said, giving him a patient look, as if he was asked something obvious by a

small child. “That goes without saying. I was thinking of targeting Sulamnon first. That would

immediately spark another round of Splinter Wars. Sulamnon wouldn’t care about any excuses from

Eldemar’s government. Not if it was obvious that the wraith bomb came from Eldemar. With another

continental conflict under way, Eldemar would have no forces to spare on suppressing me. In fact,

they would surely be tempted to make use of my… assets to help them win the war. I…”

For a moment, Sudomir looked like he was about to continue with his explanation, but then he

suddenly froze up and some of the mania that had taken over him seemed to drain out of him.

Only for a moment, though. Almost immediately, the spark of madness returned to his eyes once

again, except this time it was slightly different. There was violence and aggression lurking there now,

and his face twisted into an outraged snarl.

Sudomir’s flesh suddenly turned green and his body started to swell in size. He grew a tail and

horns, his eyes became slitted and his teeth sharpened to dagger-like points. Zorian, who had

actually seen Sudomir transformed into a giant monster once before, realized what he was looking at

and started to shout out a warning to Zach and Alanic.

Alanic was already reacting, though. The moment Sudomir started to transform, he rushed up to him

and slammed his palm against his chest. A multitude of yellow ribbons covered in some sort of

religious writing sprang into existence around Sudomir. They circled around the captured

necromancer once before sinking into his flesh, causing the transformation to stop and Sudomir to

be instantly wrenched back to his human form.

Sudomir stared at Alanic in shock for a full second, at a loss for words.

“Oh…” he finally said. “Well. That didn’t work out as well as I hoped.”

Alanic made a slashing motion with his left hand and then lightly poked Sudomir on the forehead

with his index finger. This caused Sudomir to suddenly become wreathed in dark red light and then

collapse into unconsciousness.

“Let’s go,” Alanic said, motioned for Zach and Zorian to follow him out of the cell. “We’ll continue this

interrogation later. For now, we have an Ibasan base to capture.”

Chapter 070

Carried Away

Deep beneath Cyoria, in a recently excavated cavern separated from the main tunnel network, an

army was being assembled. It consisted of about 200 people, about 120 of which had been gathered

by Alanic through various means while the rest were mercenaries Zorian had hired for considerable

amounts of money. Of course, this number did not include the many non-combat experts that would

be responsible for figuring out how the Ibasan gate functioned. Nor did it take into account the many

golems that Zorian had made for the occasion, about 80 of which were scattered through the area,

or the 40 aranean mercenaries that were hired from the three different webs recommended by the

Silent Doorway Adepts.

As far as armies went, this wasn’t much. But it was still a sizeable group, and getting it past Ibasan

patrols without them noticing their passage was… difficult.

For ordinary mages, that is. Zorian could just send his simulacrum to sneak past these patrols and

then just open a Gate to let the assembled forces through unmolested and unnoticed.

There was something very amusing about using dimensional gates to bypass Ibasan patrols,

establishing a temporary staging ground deep in their territory, and then launching a surprise attack

at their base.

Zorian was just in the process of attaching small metal cylinders to his belt, each one filled with

potent alchemical mixtures, when he sensed Zach approaching him.

“You look worried,” Zach told him.

Zorian frowned. He didn’t notice it before Zach pointed it out, but yeah. He kind of was.

“A little,” Zorian admitted, continuing his preparations. “I mean, we’re risking another confrontation

with Quatach-Ichl here. He’s one of the few people who has the ability to do us lasting harm. Every

time we tangle with him, we’re taking a big risk.”

“Eh, it’ll be fine,” Zach said dismissively, giving him a strong pat on the back that had Zorian swaying

in place for a second. He gave Zach a glare for that, but his fellow time traveler just grinned at him in

response. “Besides, the annoying pile of bones isn’t nearly as dangerous as you think. I’ve fought

him plenty of times, and I’m still standing. He doesn’t like to use necromancy in battle for some

reason.”

Alanic, who was staring at the map of the Ibasan base along with Xvim, decided this merited a

response from him.

“Most necromantic spells aren’t well suited for battle,” Alanic said, not taking his eyes off the map.

“They take too much concentration and they need to overcome the target’s magic resistance to

work. It’s faster and cheaper to just burn people to a crisp or cut them to pieces. The terrible

necromantic spells that are sometimes bandied about in textbooks are torture spells meant to be

inflicted on a subdued victim, not something you use in an even fight.”

There was a long pause as Zach and Zorian digested this. One of these days, Zorian decided, he

really had to ask Alanic about his past. The old battle priest would likely refuse to talk about it at first,

but maybe if he picked a right moment and was really persistent?

Well, whatever. It was a thought for some other time. He considered pointing out that a fight between

them and Quatach-Ichl wasn’t exactly an even one, since the difference in power and skill between

the ancient lich and any one of them was still a yawning chasm rather than anything resembling a

close match-up, but he figured that would be missing the point. Alanic’s point was that Quatach-Ichl

likely didn’t go for necromantic magic in a fight because it was suboptimal, and that was probably

true – getting into a habit of toying with your opponents was quite stupid, and the ancient lich had

been shrewd enough to survive for more than a thousand years now.

Truth be told, Zorian found those jagged disintegration beams that Quatach-Ichl liked to use to be

plenty terrifying in their own way.

“You know,” Zorian suddenly said. “My past self would be horrified if he saw me right now.”

“Why?” Zach asked, arching his eyebrow in askance.

“This attack is pretty… audacious,” said Zorian. “There is no way my past self would ever consider

this a reasonable risk to take. A part of me scoffs at this, dismissing it as simple cowardice, but there

is another part of me that can’t help but wonder whether the time loop had eroded away my ability to

recognize what is and is not appropriately cautious behavior. What if we manage to leave the time

loop and deal with Red Robe, only to die two months later because we did something completely

stupid out of sheer habit?”

To Zorian’s surprise, Zach actually seemed to give the question some serious thought. Zorian

expected him to either dismiss his concerns or question how Zorian could possibly know what his

past self would have thought of their current situation. Instead, Zach seemed to consider the issue in

his head for well over a minute before responding.

“I doubt that’s going to happen,” he eventually said, his tone and mannerisms somewhat subdued. “I

have… things I need to do after we get out. Social things. It will be at least a year or two before I can

start picking fights with dragons or whatnot, and I don’t think you’ll start looking for trouble without

me prodding you. A couple of years should be enough to let us adjust to a world without restarts,

right?”

Zorian simply gave Zach a non-committal hum in response. Zach had a pretty rosy picture of Zorian

in his head if he thought there was no way he could get himself into trouble on his own. Zorian still

wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life if… when they got out of the time loop, but he would

probably need a lot of money and rare resources. He could easily imagine getting into trouble in the

process of acquiring these, or once he amassed enough that people start to take notice or once he

told people what he was actually doing with all these acquisitions.

Zach’s inordinate fondness for picking fights with giant monsters was definitely dangerous, but

Zorian suspected his personal ambitions could be even more dangerous than that. A mage of Zach’s

caliber can usually flee from giant monsters if they find themselves overmatched against it. Make a

human organization interested enough in you, though, and they will hound you till the day you die.

He shook his head and steeled himself. Now was not the time to contemplate those topics too

deeply. The opening moves of this attack were about to begin and Zorian had a crucial role to play in

them. If they wanted to stop Quatach-Ichl from being alerted and summoned back to the base,

someone had to sneak into the base and either assassinate or disable as many Ibasan leaders as

possible before the main force of the attack hit. That someone was, of course, Zorian. Him and the

aranean mercenaries he had hired for the occasion, that is.

Cloaking one’s presence thoroughly enough to avoid dedicated scrutiny was quite hard. In a contest

between two equally skilled mages, one of which was trying to hide and one of which was seeking

for the hidden one, the seeker would almost always come out on top. If your opponent could

manipulate your very mind, however, dictating what you see, hear and remember… then even the

most sophisticated detection spell could not help you find them.

Well, that was the theory, at least. Zorian was quite sure the Ibasans would catch on to their

presence relatively soon. Mind magic was not exactly unknown among mages, even if few of them

could manifest it as stealthily and flexibly as Zorian and his new aranean minions could. Still. They

didn’t have to stay undetected forever – just long enough to track down and remove anyone who

knew how to contact Quatach-Ichl.

“I’m going,” Zorian said out loud, speaking to himself as much as he was to the people around him.

“Leave a simulacrum with us,” warned Alanic.

Zorian hesitated for a moment. He had dismissed all his simulacrums before the operation began so

that they wouldn’t be a drain on his mana reserves. It was annoying, because it meant he would

have to rely on Daimen again to re-establish a link with Koth, but he felt this operation deserved his

full focus. That said, Zorian shouldn’t be doing anything too mana intensive during the initial

infiltration, so maybe leaving a simulacrum behind in the command room wouldn’t be a bad idea.

He executed a complex series of chants and gestures and then cupped his hands in front of him,

causing a milky white sphere of ectoplasm to materialize in front of him. He felt the spell reach

towards his soul, connecting it to the ball of ectoplasm in front of him. The moment he felt the

connection snap into place, he plunged his right arm straight into the ball of ectoplasm and imposed

upon it an image of himself, causing it to squirm and writhe like a living thing.

“That always looks so freaky,” Zach commented off to the side.

Zorian ignored him. This was the most sensitive part of the spell, since the caster had to keep their

image firmly in mind as they manipulated the ectoplasm. If they faltered even for a second, the spell

would either fail or produce a hopelessly false copy. This was because, although the spell was

tapping into the caster’s soul to create the copy, it was tapping into something that described a

creature of flesh and blood and trying to translate it into a form made out of magical fields and

ectoplasm. A multitude of little and not-so-little sacrifices and compromises had to be made during

this process, and a non-sapient spell couldn’t be trusted to prioritize things properly. The first time

Zorian succeeded in producing a simulacrum, for example, he got a nearly-mindless wreck that

nonetheless contained a vividly detailed internal bone structure. The spell sacrificed nearly

everything else to get that one thing just right.

Of course, Zorian was now too well versed with the spell to fail like that, even with Zach distracting

him with inane comments. The writhing sphere swelled in size and erupted into thin, rope-like

pseudopods that formed a rough outline of a human being…

Two minutes later, a flawless-looking replica of Zorian opened its eyes and looked around. One

would think that simulacrums would come into existence already aware of everything and ready to

spring into action on a moment’s notice, but in practice they always seemed a little confused after

being created and took about 30 seconds to gather their bearings and calm down.

“There,” Zorian said. “Anything else?”

“No,” Alanic said, shaking his head. “Go. Try not to get yourself killed, I guess.”

“I guess?” Zorian mumbled under his breath. “Thank you, Alanic, you really know how to make a

motivational speech.”

And then he left. The attack on the Ibasan base beneath Cyoria had begun.

- break -

The initial stages of the infiltration went very well. Zorian used a combination of a floating invisibility

sphere and clouding the minds of the Ibasan guards to smuggle himself and the aranea into the

base, after which they split up into small groups to cover more ground in as little time as possible.

There were some complications. For one thing, there were some pretty insidious and powerful wards

scattered around the base, arranged in no pattern that Zorian could decipher. These hadn’t been

there when Zorian invaded the base in the previous restarts, which implied that Ibasans normally

took those down before executing the invasion of Cyoria. Zorian was kind of baffled as to why they

would tear down their own wards like that, though, even if they did intend to abandon the base after

the invasion. For a moment he actually worried that they had been betrayed by some of their

mercenaries, despite their precautions, and that the base security had been upgraded in response.

However, the wards in question were arranged so haphazardly, the entire warding layout so full of

holes, that Zorian eventually ruled out that idea. If the Ibasans had been expecting them, they would

have done a better job of warding the place than this. As it was, the warding setup looked almost like

a collection of individual wards, each of which had been erected by a different person without

bothering to consult anyone else about what they were doing. In at least two places the wards

clashed with each other so severely that they created ‘dead zones’ in the areas where they

overlapped, canceling each other out.

Zorian had a rather silly urge to write a letter to Quatach-Ichl, criticizing him for not teaching his

minions how to make a proper warding scheme. This sort of thing reflected badly on him too, you

know, he ought to think of his reputation…

Anyway. Another problem was the Ibasans had these brown dogs that could smell the aranea

coming, no matter how well cloaked, and wouldn’t stop barking. And they were either naturally mind

blanked or had been made so artificially, because Zorian couldn’t detect or connect to their minds at

all. He had been forced to kill and replace them with motionless ectoplasmic replicas, which took an

annoying amount of time and mana on his part.

After that, everything went perfectly for a while. Numerous Ibasan leaders were eliminated, and

though the base was starting to wake up to the fact something funny was going on in their base, they

were still not aware of the extent of the problem on their hands. However, there was something that

Zorian had not taken into account…

The Ibasans had fought against aranea before. Before the time loop – and even during the time

loop, before Red Robe erased them from the time loop – the Cyorian web had been a huge obstacle

to their operations. As such, they had a multitude of countermeasures and defenses aimed

specifically against the aranea. Many of these were abandoned when the local aranea mysteriously

disappeared, experts in charge of manning them re-assigned to other, more productive duties… but

some of them remained intact. Just in case.

When the aranea moved near the center of the base they seemed to cross some invisible line that

immediately triggered a base-wide alarm. It was loud, shrill, and everyone in the base seemed to

immediately realize what it meant because they immediately started layering mental protection spells

on themselves and grabbing their weapons.

[Oops?] the aranea closest to Zorian said hesitantly.

[I don’t even understand what got us,] another complained. [Human magic is such bullshit…]

Zorian snorted derisively. Well, it wasn’t like this was completely unexpected. He reached out with

his mind, connecting himself with the network of telepathic relays that had been densely distributed

across this entire section of the underworld, and ordered the miniature monster horde he had

gathered to attack the base from all directions.

From one of the tunnels, a huge red centipede surged forwards, hordes of hook goblins and cave

drakes following after it. The Ibasans concentrated their fire at the centipede first, trying to bring

down the biggest threat, only to see most of their spells fizzle out due to the many wards Zorian had

attached to it. From another tunnel, a swarm of floating, jellyfish-like monsters came pouring in. They

looked slow and weak, but when Ibasans tried to bring them down they discovered that the jellyfish

had an innate shielding magic that blocked their projectiles. Worse, the jellyfish could somehow

interface with one another and merge their shields into a stronger, unified barrier. From the third

tunnel, a horde of phalanx toads came rushing into the base. The Ibasans killed many of them, but

there were five more for each they killed and they acted with unusual organization and discipline,

spontaneously forming into coherent groups and sweeping everything before them with their spear-

like tongues.

Finally, the fourth group of monsters didn’t bother moving through any of the existing tunnels – the

rock worms Zorian subverted simply burst into the base from down below, having dug out their own

entrance into the base.

The whole plan had a high chance of falling apart at this moment, Zorian knew. Although he and the

aranea had gutted a lot of their leadership, they hadn’t gotten everyone that could summon Quatach-

Ichl. If the Ibasans wanted to call the ancient lich for help, they could. However, Zorian had noticed

in the past that Ibasans were generally reluctant to call upon their leader. Quatach-Ichl hated getting

called to deal with ‘trivial things’. He didn’t usually kill people for disappointing him in such a manner,

but he was rather prone of relieving them of their positions or reducing their salary – which were

horrifying enough consequences for most people.

Zorian was hoping that the Ibasans, faced with what appeared to be an aranean attack, would

decide to try and tackle things on their own, rather than immediately call Quatach-Ichl to help them.

Well, he seemed to have been right about that. The Ibasans chose to fight the monster invasion on

their own. The trouble is, they were winning. The centipede was intercepted by trolls and

bludgeoned to death with sheer force of numbers, the jellyfish shield was visibly weakening and the

phalanx toads were being pushed back with a liberal application of fire. As for the rock worms, well…

the Ibasans had rock worms of their own. Zorian had counted on the monster horde getting

defeated, but not this fast. He wasn’t done killing the leadership yet, dammit!

He suddenly got a message from his simulacrum that Zach wanted to help out with the

assassination.

Well. The plan was already failing, so he supposed there was no harm in letting Zach wreck things

for a bit before they abort the whole thing.

As quickly as possible, he synchronized with his simulacrum and opened a gate between the

command room and the Ibasan base, letting Zach pass through.

Zach took a rather long look at the battlefield, taking in how the battles were progressing first-hand,

and then turned to Zorian.

“Do you know where those leaders are at the moment?”

“Err, sort of?” Zorian said. “I mostly had the aranea pinpointing their location for me, but they’re kind

of busy directing the monster horde at the moment.”

“But you know the general area they’re in, right?” Zach prodded.

“Oh yeah,” Zorian nodded. He pointed at a big, solidly-constructed building not far from them. “Most

of the surviving ones are in that building over there. The wards are pretty tricky so it will take me

some time to–”

Before Zorian could finish speaking, Zach had already fired some kind of projectile at the building. It

was seemingly tiny, more of a faint red pinprick of light than a proper-looking offensive spell, but its

flight path was followed with a piercing scream so loud it made Zorian’s ears hurt.

The projectile slammed into the wall of the building and then burst into crescent spatial distortions

that sliced through everything in the vicinity with no visible resistance. The whole heavily warded

building fell apart like an apple thrown into an industrial blender machine, burying everyone in it

under several tons of rubble.

“One problem solved,” said Zach, lowering his hand. “What about the others?”

“Well,” said Zorian, a little sourly. Only a little, though – truthfully, he had been expecting something

like this when he agreed to involve Zach into this. “If the Ibasans didn’t already know they’re under

attack by more than just aranea, they certainly do now. Let’s see if we can kill them before they

realize just how disgustingly powerful you are and call Quatach-Ichl in panic.”

“Let’s,” Zach agreed.

Deciding there was no point in pretending this attack was just a minor aranean offensive anymore,

Zorian sent a telepathic message to Xvim and Alanic to start the assault in earnest.

He received a confirmation almost immediately. It seemed Zach wasn’t the only one who was

spoiling for a fight.

Zorian understood. They had all spent so much time and resources into organizing this attack, it

would be almost a crime to call it off now.

It was time for Ibasans to see what it’s like to be suddenly invaded.

- break -

Beneath the city of Cyoria, a vicious battle was underway. The small army that Alanic had

assembled, bolstered by the various mercenaries, Zorian’s golems and what was left of the

dominated monster horde, advanced deep into the disorganized Ibasan ranks. However, the Ibasans

weren’t just passive victims. Despite having their entire high-ranking leadership gutted by Zach and

Zorian, despite the huge losses they suffered in the initial attack from the monster horde, despite the

shock they must have felt at the appearance of another human army, the Ibasans still resisted the

attack with considerable might. Their top leadership may have fallen, but local commanders quickly

assumed control of the remaining forces and did their best to link up and coordinate their

movements. Huge war golems charged into rapidly-forming defense groups, aiming to break them

up, only to be met with screaming hordes of war trolls barring their way. The aranea led the

remaining monsters into suicidal offensives, only to be countered with equally suicidal delaying

actions from the Ibasans’ own war beasts. Zach and Zorian converged on any local commander that

seemed to be especially good at their job, aided by a couple of Alanic’s men that seemed to be

really accurate with a rifle and fond of head-shots, but there was always someone wiling and

capable of replacing them once they moved on to other targets.

Currently, Zorian’s simulacrum was standing in the vicinity of the dimensional gate at the center of

the Ibasan settlement, where Xvim and Alanic had moved shortly after the attack began.

Unfortunately, the gate had been shut down by the Ibasans when they realized they were going to

lose it – another thing that didn’t go according to plan. Even if they managed to win this, a powered

down gate stabilization frame was much less useful as an object of study than a working

dimensional gate.

“We should have brought more monsters,” Alanic said suddenly, standing not far from the

simulacrum and observing the battlefield. “We should have brought more everything, really, but I

don’t think we could have realistically recruited more people. We’re doing very well compared to the

numbers arrayed against us, but it’s not enough. There are simply too few of us compared to the

number of Ibasans gathered here.”

“We were afraid that if we sent too many monsters, it would spook them into calling Quatach-Ichl

immediately,” the simulacrum pointed out. “Though considering how successful they were against

the horde, I agree we were probably too conservative with them.”

“Speaking of which, did Zach and Zorian manage to eliminate the Ibasan leaders before they

contacted Quatach-Ichl for help or not?” Xvim asked.

The simulacrum quickly contacted the original and asked him that same question. Ten seconds later

he turned back to Xvim.

“It’s doubtful,” he said, shaking his head. “They had trouble locating the last two leaders. They’re

dead now, but they had plenty of time to realize how dire the situation is and call for help.”

Xvim said nothing for a second, looking thoughtfully at the powered-down gate next to them.

“We shouldn’t have taken the gate from them so quickly,” Xvim said. “We should have left it in their

hands for a while to give them an avenue of retreat. I think they would have tried to fall back into that

undead mansion instead of fighting a lost battle if they had a choice.”

“Or they might have found a way to commandeer some of Sudomir’s undead minions if given

enough time, making our current issue even worse,” the simulacrum said with a shrug.

“We’ll analyze what we did wrong later,” said Alanic firmly. “What we need now is solutions. How do

we salvage this situation?”

“Shouldn’t we just retreat?” asked Xvim curiously. “Even if we take the base in the end, it will take us

many hours to do so and cost many lives. On top of that, there is a high chance that Quatach-Ichl

will come back before we are done and tip the balance in Ibasan favor.”

Alanic said nothing for a few seconds, clearly discontent with that idea.

“I have an idea,” the simulacrum eventually said. “Why don’t we just rip the gate stabilization frame

out of the ground, pedestal and all, and carry it off to the surface for study. I mean, the original

reason why we wanted to secure the base and do our research here was because moving an active

dimensional gate was impossible. But we don’t have an active gate. We have an inert stabilization

frame, so what stops us from simply carrying it off somewhere else before trying to figure it out?”

Xvim and Alanic gave him surprised looks.

“What?” the simulacrum asked defensively. “The idea has merit!”

“It does,” Alanic agreed. “I was just surprised to see you make such a suggestion. Sometimes I

forget simulacrums like you are more than just extensions of Zorian and can have ideas of your

own.”

“Same,” Xvim agreed.

The simulacrum scowled. Stupid flesh-and-blood people and their prejudices.

Soon, Xvim and Alanic ordered their forces to fall back a little and threw themselves into the task of

cutting the gate stabilization frame free of the ground without damaging something crucial. The

pedestal the frame was affixed to had some kind of root-like structure that extended into the rock

beneath it, meaning that a surprisingly large chunk of the ground had to be taken along with the gate

itself.

None of the problems were in any way insurmountable, though, and the whole thing was soon

floated into the air and slowly pushed towards one of the base exits.

The movement did not go unnoticed, however, and when the Ibasans saw what they were doing

they went completely berserk. Apparently they really hated the idea of the gate stabilization frame

being carried away like that. From that moment on, the whole battle shifted in tone – instead of trying

to minimize their losses and stalling for time, the Ibasans suddenly surged forward and tried to

recover the stolen gate at all costs. Alanic’s forces shifted from trying to put pressure on the Ibasans

to a strictly defensive posture, trying to keep the Ibasans away from the retreating gate with equal

zeal.

The situation only grew more dire soon after that, as Ibasans realized that recovering the gate was a

lost cause and started trying to destroy it instead.

“Why are they so upset about us taking the gate!?” Zach shouted while creating a thick prismatic

wall in between the floating gate stabilization frame and the approaching Ibasan war party.

He was just in time. The moment the barrier snapped into place, three different projectiles slammed

into it – a thin blue javelin of force that crackled with some kind of magical energy, an animated

serpent made out of green fire and a large white sphere that had smaller red spheres orbiting around

it. The wall flickered, cycling through different colors, and for a moment it seemed it would hold… but

then the three projectiles combined together to release some kind of combined pulse that disrupted

the barrier and it fell apart into multi-colored smoke.

The fire serpent, the only survivor of this clash of spells, surged madly towards the floating gate,

seeking to detonate itself against its surface. It never reached it. A milky white sphere soon hit it in

the flank, courtesy of Zorian, causing it to fall apart into rapidly fading clusters of green fire.

“They’re afraid of what Quatach-Ichl will do to them when he finds out they let someone acquire a

sample of his work,” Zorian said. The simulacrum suspected the original had taken said information

straight from the minds of nearby Ibasans. “He doesn’t even let his allies examine it. How do you

think he would feel about this?”

The battle raged on. The simulacrum watched, rather discontent, as people fought all around him to

either destroy or preserve the floating gate. He couldn’t do much himself, as any significant mana

use would cripple the original’s ability to fight, so he was reduced to a role of observer for the most

part. He watched the battle carefully, scrutinizing every detail in hopes of spotting something that

required his attention.

The Ibasans charged forward again and again, supported by long-range spells from their allies in the

back ranks, only to be repulsed. Zorian’s golems slowly dwindled in number, the volume of spell fire

too much even for their heavy wards to handle. When they grew too damaged to be of much use,

Zorian strapped alchemical bombs all over them and sent them into suicide charges to halt

particularly troublesome offensives. Zach’s spells reaped a bloody toll on Ibasan forces, but not even

his mana reserves were endless and the time he spent in recovery gradually increased as the battle

grew more heated. One of the Ibasan mages decided to sacrifice his life for the cause – as he

finished casting his last spell, he removed a ritual dagger from his belt and slit his own throat, using

some blood magic to pour every shred of his life-force into it. The resulting spell produced an

incandescent meteor that punched through every single obstacle in front of it, and would have no

doubt reduced the floating gate into molten rubble if Xvim hadn’t used a series of dimensional gates

to redirect it back at the Ibasans.

Finally, the simulacrum noticed something he felt merited his attention. On the edges of the main

battlefield, a small group of friendly soldiers was being overwhelmed. Of the original fifteen, most

were already dead. Only six still lived, and only three of those six could walk and fight properly. The

simulacrum telepathically alerted the original to the situation, but was told everyone was currently

busy and that sacrifices have to be made in situations like these.

The simulacrum then pointed out to him that one of the survivors was Taiven. The original

immediately changed his mind and told the simulacrum to go and help them.

The simulacrum wouldn’t have actually obeyed an order to leave Taiven to her fate, but it was nice

that he and the original were still on the same page in this regard. He teleported next to the group

and immediately intercepted an incoming fireball with a well-placed dispelling wave. Taiven’s

shocked face was kind of priceless.

“What are you waiting for?” the simulacrum asked the group. One of the Ibasans tried to sneak up

on them by kicking up a cloud of dust with a ‘misaimed’ spell and using it as a cover for his

approach. He received a force lance to the face for his trouble. “This position is lost. Why haven’t

you regrouped elsewhere?”

“We can’t leave them!” Taiven protested, pointing at the three wounded soldiers next to her.

“I told you to leave us here,” one of the wounded soldiers said. “Just go. We’ll stall them to buy you

some time.”

“We’re not leaving anyone behind!” Taiven insisted.

The other two healthy soldiers said nothing, but the simulacrum could see on their faces that they

didn’t want to leave the wounded soldiers behind either. They were probably friends.

“How about this – you go and take these people to safety, and I’ll hold the Ibasans at bay?” the

simulacrum offered.

“Zorian…” Taiven started, sounding both a little annoyed and a little worried.

The simulacrum wasn’t listening to her anymore, though. He could feel the Ibasans moving towards

the group again so he conjured two large severing discs above his palms and launched them

forward in front of him. The first wave of Ibasans literally fell apart before the discs, screaming

horribly as they were effortlessly sliced apart by the two buzzing spell constructs. The commander of

the Ibasan group tried to restore order to his unit, shouting orders and threats so loudly the entire

base must have heard him. He fell silent when his own bodyguard slammed a knife in his eye

socket, killing him instantly. The apparent betrayal (which was actually the result of Zorian

puppeteering the man’s body, not genuine betrayal) further sowed chaos in the Ibasan group,

stalling the attack.

The simulacrum then shifted his attention back to Taiven and her group, only to find the soldiers

gone but Taiven still present.

“Let me guess,” the simulacrum sighed. “You sent the rest of them to safety but decided to stay

behind with me?”

“I told you,” she said. “We’re not leaving anyone behind.”

In retrospect, he really should have made it clear he was a simulacrum right from the start.

“Listen,” he started. “I’m actually–”

[Stupid simulacrum!] the original’s voice thundered in his mind. [What the hell are you doing down

there!? The rest of the soldiers are back but you and Taiven aren’t? Stop fooling around and

spending all our mana, dammit! I need that to defend the gate!]

The simulacrum winced at the angry tirade in his head. The interruption left him confused for a

second, unable to remember what he was doing right before the original contacted him.

He was further distracted when another volley of spells erupted towards the two of them, roughly half

of it directed at him and the other half at Taiven. Taiven blocked her share of projectiles easily

enough, and the simulacrum was just about to do the same for himself when he felt his mana

reserves rapidly drain away. Apparently the original had decided to blow his entire mana reserves on

something, leaving them both defenseless for a while.

“Damn it, original,” the simulacrum quietly grumbled.

Then the spell volley hit him, tearing straight into him and blowing his ectoplasmic form into rapidly

fading pieces.

As his tattered remains started to unravel, he spared one last look at Taiven, who was looking at him

with an absolutely horrified look on her face.

Only then did he remember what he had been trying to tell her before the original contacted him.

His last fading thought was that he really, really should have made it clear that he was just a

simulacrum right from the start…

- break -

In the end, they managed to extract the gate stabilization frame out of the Ibasan base safe and

intact. The frenzied attempts of the Ibasan forces to stop them had petered out after a while, the

surviving soldiers retreating back to their base and allowing them to withdraw in peace. The forces

assembled by Alanic and Zorian had paid a heavy price for this success, however, being cut nearly

in half by the end.

Only time would tell if the researchers Xvim gathered would find out anything useful about the

recovered gate stabilization frame.

As they suspected, Quatach-Ichl showed up not long after they finished their retreat, having received

a call for help at some point in the fight. Zach and Zorian had been on edge for a few days after this,

expecting the Ibasans to launch a premature invasion of Cyoria, much like they had in that one

restart where Zorian prodded Eldemar into attacking Iasku Mansion… but what happened instead is

that the remaining Ibasans started to withdraw from Cyoria entirely.

The invasion, it seemed, was being canceled.

Chapter 071

Shadows of the Past

After the attack on the Ibasan base had been concluded and it became obvious that no immediate

invasion would result from it, Zorian proceeded to re-establish his link to Koth. Since he had

dismissed his simulacrum in Koth before the attack, he had to rely on Daimen’s help for the second

time in the restart. Although it kind of bothered him that he was forced to rely on Daimen so much,

he had to admit his help made things a lot easier than they would have otherwise been.

He didn’t expect any problems to crop up and, in a way, there really hadn’t been any. The

dimensional gate opened just fine, after all. The problem was that it opened directly inside the

Taramatula estate. Instead of finding some out-of-the-way location in the jungle, like they had

agreed on beforehand, Daimen had decided to simply open the gate inside a heavily warded room

meant for receiving teleporting visitors. While a dozen or so Taramatula family members stood

around the edges of the room and watched.

Zorian, who had stepped through the gate first, was so shocked at the sight that he immediately

halted in his tracks. This caused Zach, who was coming right behind him, to crash into him.

Thankfully, they managed to keep their balance instead of falling to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

That would have been awkward.

“Hey, why did you sto– Oh. That’s a lot bigger reception that I was expecting,” Zach said, looking

around.

Zorian didn’t bother responding to Zach’s feeble attempt at humor. Instead, he zeroed in on his older

brother and gave him an outraged glare. “Daimen, what the hell were you thinking!?”

To his credit, Daimen actually winced at the question, looking properly guilty.

“I’m sorry,” he said, waving his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. “I didn’t have a choice,

okay? I can’t leave the Taramatula estate anymore and I couldn’t just open a dimensional gate in

their home without their knowledge or consent. It was either this or aborting the whole thing entirely.”

Zach and Zorian were quiet for a second, processing that statement.

“Why can’t you leave the Taramatula estate?” Zach finally asked. “Are you a prisoner or something?”

“It’s complicated,” Daimen said with a heavy sigh. “Let’s go find somewhere quiet to talk.”

Before either Zach or Zorian could say anything, one of the gathered Taramatula decided to cut in

and make a suggestion. It was Ulanna, the woman who had greeted them the first time they had

visited the estate.

“I know just the place,” Ulanna said. “For a family of our stature, not having an appropriate meeting

room for occasions such as these would be quite an embarrassment. Please wait a minute while I

make some arrangements and then we can go.”

Zorian gave Ulanna a thoughtful look. Though her words made it seem she was just trying to be a

good host, he could understand the underlying message easily enough: the Taramatula were an

involved party in all this, and they wanted to be present during the talk.

Ulanna raised an eyebrow at his look, as if daring him to object. He didn’t.

“That’s quite all right,” he simply said. “Me and Zach will go collapse the gate while you deal with

things on your end.”

Zorian had no idea what Daimen had told the Taramatula about the gate. Hopefully he hadn’t been

foolish enough to reveal that he and Zorian were opening passages between two different

continents, in which case it was imperative that they close the gate quickly, before they could puzzle

out the truth for themselves.

As he and Zach worked to collapse the gate, he could hear Ulanna conversing with some of the

other Taramatula in the room. His grasp on the local language was still very poor, so the only thing

he understood was that she ordered food and drink to be made and brought to them. Zorian was in

no mood for either, but he figured out it would be impolite to try and stop her.

A little while later, they were all ushered into a relatively small but luxurious room. There were five of

them present: Ulanna, Daimen, Orissa, Zach and Zorian. Despite the presence of Ulanna and

Orissa, though, it was Daimen that provided most of the explanation for what was happening.

Apparently, one or more members of Daimen’s team had talked to outsiders about the orb they had

found, and the story had blown up very quickly. Within hours, everyone and their mother wanted to

speak to Daimen to find out what he intended to do with the orb and to try and influence him to sell it

to whatever group they represented.

Caught off guard by the sudden flood of interested buyers and aware that not everyone was willing

to take their refusal to sell the orb in good grace, Daimen and his team retreated to the Taramatula

estate and barricaded themselves there until further notice.

“The people after us can’t afford to be too brazen with the Taramatula, so we’re safe while we

remain inside the estate,” Daimen concluded. “But the moment we step out we’ll be ambushed by

dozens of different groups. They know we’re in here. They have the estate heavily monitored.

Everyone and everything going in or out of the estate is closely tracked. I couldn’t possibly leave the

estate to open the gate elsewhere.”

“Maybe I’m just stupid, but why don’t the Taramatula simply tell all these people to back off? They’re

supposed to be the main political force here, no?” Zach asked.

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Ulanna said. “There are too many powerful groups making their

moves here, quite a few of them from outside our sphere of influence. Though they cannot afford to

take us lightly, the same is true for us as well. This is a sensitive situation and we have to move

carefully. Rest assured, though, that we are taking note of every slight against us for when the time

is right.”

“Another issue is that some elements of the local government are discussing the possibility of simply

confiscating the orb from us by force,” Daimen said. “The Taramatula have to spend a lot of their

influence on making sure that the initiative doesn’t get anywhere. Damn it, I knew it was important to

keep this find a secret but I had no idea it would inspire this sort of greed…”

“It’s a portable pocket dimension of massive size,” Orissa pointed out. “On top of that, it contains

ruins from the Age of Gods, and probably the remains of Awan-Temti’s wealth. There could be divine

artifacts in there, plants and animals that have gone extinct in the rest of the world, anything. Of

course it inspires so much greed. You’re fortunate you have the Taramatula family to shield you from

all this while we figure out what to do.”

“Yes, yes, I get it,” Daimen said patiently. “I’m lucky to have you, dear.”

“Have you made any trips to the pocket dimension yet?” Zach asked curiously.

“We haven’t even discovered how to deploy the orb,” Daimen said, shaking his head. “We don’t have

a command marker like Zorian does, so we have to do things the hard way.”

“Meaning?” Zach prodded for details.

“We have to reverse-engineer the control spells that are used for operating the orb,” Daimen said. “A

generational treasure like this one would definitely have a method of controlling the orb without a

command marker, as a safety measure if nothing else. We just have to find it. Unfortunately, that

could take a while.”

Daimen gave Zorian a meaningful look. Though Zorian didn’t know for sure what he was trying to tell

him, he could guess. While finding a way to operate the orb without a marker was not a priority for

him and Zach, it would mean a lot for Daimen. He was probably well aware that Zorian had no

intention whatsoever of revealing his abilities to Daimen outside the time loop, which would make

those control spells absolutely crucial to his mission. Without them, even removing the orb from its

resting place would be impossible, greatly complicating everything.

“Even if we had the means of operating the orb, we would still refrain from sending an expedition to

its interior at this time,” Orissa noted. “The possibility of further guardian beasts, like that god-

touched hydra, is too high. Months of preparation would be required to mount a proper expedition,

and the current political situation makes such preparations impossible.”

“Yes, exactly,” Daimen quickly agreed. He turned to Zach and Zorian. “And because I’m stuck here

all the time, I can’t really hire the experts I need to figure out how to operate the orb, either. The truth

is that I have very little to do here. I was thinking it might be a good idea for me to disappear for a

few days. Get the orb away from covetous eyes and talk to some old friends about my options.”

“This again,” Orissa said with an unhappy frown.

This sparked a brief argument between Orissa and Daimen, since Daimen didn’t want to explain

what exactly he was up to and Orissa insisted that she had every right to know the details. In all

honesty, Zorian thought Orissa’s position was quite reasonable and empathized with her frustration

at Daimen’s evasiveness. However, he also couldn’t fault Daimen for this, since it wasn’t like he

could just openly say that–

“If you want us to take you back to Cyoria with us when we reopen the gate, you should just say so,”

Zach said.

Everyone sent him a shocked look. Well, everyone except Zorian – he just buried his face in his

hands and tried to take deep breaths.

“Damn it, Zach…” he mumbled into his hands.

“What?” Zach protested, giving Zorian an exasperated look. “Any story you and Daimen cook up

wouldn’t last a day and you know it. They’re not stupid. They’d figure it out soon enough.”

“Thank you, mister Noveda,” Ulanna told him. “I’m glad that at least one man here respects our

reasoning skills.”

Zach gave her a thumbs-up and a sunny grin.

“You’re saying you opened a dimensional passage here all the way from Eldemar?” Orissa asked,

sounding just a little bit incredulous.

“We do a lot of crazy stuff,” Zach said with a careless shrug.

It turned out that neither Ulanna nor Orissa were very familiar with the details of how the gate spell

works. This wasn’t very surprising, as the spell was extremely rare, but somehow Zorian kept

forgetting little details like that.

After Zorian gave them a brief explanation of how the gate spell functioned, Orissa gave him a

strange look.

“What?” Zorian asked, feeling somewhat self-conscious.

“This method you use to ignore distance limitations requires another person helping you on the other

side, yes?” she asked. Zorian nodded wordlessly. “Then how can you open a gate back to Eldemar?

Can the third Kazinski brother cast the gate spell, too?”

“What, Fortov? Please,” Zorian scoffed. “He’ll be lucky not to flunk out of the academy.”

“Zorian!” Daimen protested. He never liked it when Zorian badmouthed the rest of the family.

“No, we’ll be using the simulacrum I left back in Cyoria,” Zorian said, completely ignoring Daimen’s

outburst. “Since I can cast the gate spell, my simulacrum can obviously do the same.”

“Oh, so you can create a simulacrum too?” Ulanna asked casually, not sounding particularly

surprised. Zorian had to hand it to her, she was very good at projecting an aura of serene

confidence. Orissa seemed to be trying to mimic that attitude, but she was nowhere near good

enough to pull it off. One could see that these kind of reveals bothered her and put her somewhat

off-balance.

“We do a lot of crazy stuff,” Zorian said. He thought about mimicking Zach completely and giving her

a thumbs-up and a cheeky smile, but quickly dropped the idea. That sort of thing was something

only Zach could pull off without looking like a total idiot.

In the end, they managed to hammer out an agreement. Daimen would return to Cyoria with Zach

and Zorian and would take the orb of the first emperor along with him. Zorian would leave a

simulacrum in the Taramatula estate so that they could return via gate spell in exactly four days.

Zorian thought this would be the end of it, but his hopes were ruthlessly squashed when Daimen told

him he still had to explain to his team that he would be away for a while.

For a moment, Zorian felt the urge to make an overdramatic gesture to the uncaring heavens. And

here he’d thought this would just be a short visit to Koth, consisting of little more than replacing his

lost simulacrum and asking Daimen if he had found out anything new about the orb.

Sometimes he just couldn’t win.

- break -

It was a massive relief to Zorian when the three of them finally stepped through the gate and

returned to Cyoria. Both the Taramatula and Daimen’s team were on edge right now, and thus rather

exasperating to deal with. He kind of felt bad for his simulacrum, who would be stuck with them for

the next several days. Oh well, at least he had Kirma and Torun to talk to – those two were fairly

interesting and he suspected he might be able to broker some kind of trade with at least one of

them.

Regardless, he was back and could devote himself to other matters. Xvim’s efforts to convince

various experts to trade their secrets with him had been reasonably successful, Sudomir had to be

properly interrogated, the efforts of the researchers to understand the Ibasan gate stabilization frame

were starting to bear fruit and the Silent Doorway Adepts were hinting that they were willing to send

a group over to Koth to acquire a gate key. Sadly, recent events concerning Daimen and the orb had

probably made that last idea a dead end in this restart. His simulacrum couldn’t possibly leave the

Taramatula estate without a hundred pairs of eyes following his every move. Unfortunate. He could

really use an alternate entrance to Koth that didn’t rely on Daimen right now. He would have to

assign a high priority to this idea in future restarts.

Daimen had agreed to hand over the orb to him and Zach while he was in Cyoria. Partially because

he figured they could find out far more about it than he could, due to possessing a marker that could

actually operate it, and partially because he wasn’t entirely sure the orb would be safe in his

possession. News traveled faster than people. By all rights, his little trip to Cyoria should have gone

undetected by his pursuers, but he couldn’t be completely sure. Thus, he felt it was for the best if he

didn’t have the orb on him unless absolutely necessary.

Zorian expected that he would be the only one that could tinker with the orb to discover its secrets,

since Zach didn’t have the necessary personal soul awareness to control his marker. He was very

much wrong. Apparently, Zach didn’t need to have conscious control over his marker to take

command of the orb. After an hour or so of tinkering with the orb, Zach managed to connect to it

instinctively.

And after that one success, he no longer needed an hour of tinkering to connect to again. Simply

touching the orb would be enough to re-establish contact. Zach didn’t even have to concentrate on it

to pull it off – a touch and a stray thought were enough.

Zorian was a little sour about that. The orb certainly never reacted that way to him, no matter how

many hours he spent interacting with it. No, he had to spend months going through that hellish soul

awareness training and then more time painstakingly studying the way the marker worked to get as

far as he did. This sort of stuff really made it obvious that his marker was some kind of inferior

version of the one on Zach.

It had been only a day since they were back in Cyoria when Daimen surprised him again. He wanted

to talk to Kirielle and Fortov.

This was a bit of a problem. Both of their siblings knew for a fact that Daimen shouldn’t be in Cyoria.

Mother and Father had gone to Koth to meet with him. How on earth did he intend to explain his

presence here? But Daimen insisted that he needed to do this, and Zorian didn’t feel like arguing

with him. There was probably no great harm in it, and he was pretty sure that Daimen would go and

have those conversations behind his back if he was too stubborn.

Amusingly, Daimen wanted to talk to Kirielle and Fortov alone, without anyone else being present.

Zorian was almost certain that meant he wanted to ask them specifically about Zorian. Hah! Fortov

didn’t know anything about Zorian, and Kirielle was a little tattletale and would no doubt tell Zorian

everything that she and Daimen talked about. But he told Daimen none of that and simply wished

him luck before sending him on his way.

The next day, Daimen came back to talk to him, looking lost and confused.

“They didn’t even want to talk to me…” he complained, sounding quite dejected. It actually made

Zorian feel bad for him somewhat.

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” Zorian comforted him. “I don’t know about Fortov, but I’m pretty sure

Kirielle wouldn’t have snubbed you like that. Imaya tells me you spent an entire hour with her.”

“Yeah, but that’s all I did with her,” Daimen complained. “She spent the entire hour fidgeting and

looking uncomfortable. She barely spoke, and only when I specifically prodded her. I’m not entirely

sure, but I think she was actually a little scared of me. That’s…”

Damien waved his hands in the air, as if trying to convey some kind of unpronounceable concept

through silent gesticulation.

“Sad?” Zorian offered.

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Daimen said. “Also worrying. And upsetting. And a whole host of other

things. Especially when coupled with what happened with Fortov. Do you know what happened

when I knocked on his door?”

“Not really, no,” Zorian told him. He had actually known about Daimen’s ‘talk’ with Kirielle, since she

had told him all about it when he had come to Imaya’s place in the evening, but he honestly had no

idea how Daimen’s talk with Fortov had gone. Not well, obviously, but it would be interesting to

hear why. “What did he do?”

“He was just really abrasive to me right from the start,” Daimen said. “He refused to even let me in,

eventually started shouting at me and then slammed the door in my face and ignored me.”

Huh. Interesting.

Daimen looked at Zorian, silently asking him for an explanation. Zorian said nothing, though, and

Daimen grew visibly frustrated as seconds ticked by. He ran both of his hands through his hair and

clutched it tightly in his fists, as if wanting to tear it off.

“You’re going to go prematurely bald if you keep doing that,” Zorian commented lightly.

Daimen gave him an unamused glare.

But he did remove his hands from his head.

“I don’t understand!” Daimen protested loudly. “Am I… Am I such a horrible older brother? I

knew you didn’t like me, but even Fortov? Even little Kirielle?! Why?! What did I do?!”

Zorian clacked his tongue and considered things for a second. On one hand, he felt that Daimen

was getting exactly what he deserved. On the other hand, the fact that Daimen was so upset over

this meant that his mental image of him was a little… unfair. He decided to be a little nice to his older

brother for a change.

“In regards to Kirielle, the answer is simple, my dear eldest brother,” Zorian told him. “You’re

practically a stranger to her. By the time she was old enough to interact with people, you were

almost never at home. When was the last time you talked with her? Disregarding yesterday’s

meeting, of course.”

“Uhh…” Daimen fumbled.

“You can’t even remember,” Zorian stated, shaking his head. “Anyway, all she had of you were

stories she heard of you. Most of which came either from Mother… or from me. After all, I’m one of

the people who interacted with her the most over the years.”

“Oh, heavens help me,” Daimen lamented. “What exactly did you tell her about me?”

“The truth,” Zorian shrugged.

“You mean your truth,” Daimen accused.

“Of course,” Zorian responded, completely unmoved by the accusation. “But don’t worry, I kept quiet

about your worst excesses. Truth be told, I never liked talking about you to anyone, and that included

Kirielle. And besides, Mother never failed to take your side in everything. If it were just the matter of

stories, Kirielle would be more ambivalent to you. The thing is, she needs help… and she knows

she’ll never get it from you. She just might get it from me, though, which is why she doesn’t want to

sabotage her relations with me by getting cozy with you. She knows you kind of piss me off.”

“What do you mean ‘she needs help’?” Daimen frowned. “And why are you so sure she’d never get it

from me?”

“Because it would require standing up to Mother,” Zorian said.

Over the next hour or so, Zorian tried to familiarize Daimen with Kirielle’s situation. The arranged

marriage their parents had prepared for her. Her desire to learn magic like the rest of them. He tried

to keep the explanations brief, worried that telling this to Daimen constituted some kind of betrayal

towards Kirielle, who had told him these things in confidence. He said enough for Daimen to form a

rudimentary picture of what was happening with Kirielle behind the scenes, though.

“I can’t believe I never heard of this,” Daimen said, his eyes somewhat unfocused as he seemed to

recall something in his head. “I speak to Mother and Father often and they never mentioned this.”

“Did you ever actually ask them about Kirielle?” Zorian asked.

Daimen was quiet for a few moments.

“…no,” he eventually admitted.

“Well, there you go,” Zorian shrugged.

Daimen exhaled heavily and then corrected his posture, sitting a little straighter in his chair.

“Okay, I admit I haven’t been very fair to our little sister. I guess I kind of deserved such a chilly

reception from her,” Daimen said. “What about Fortov, then? What’s his deal?”

“How would I know?” Zorian protested. “Do you honestly think I speak to Fortov about you?”

Daimen gave him an annoyed huff. “Yes, I get it, I get it – you never talk about me to anyone if you

can help it. But surely you have some inkling about how Fortov thinks and what bothers him. You’ve

been interacting with him for six years now.”

Zorian made a weird face, momentarily struck speechless by this statement.

“What?” Zorian laughed. “Whatever gave you that idea? Why would I be interacting with Fortov?”

“Are… Are you serious?” Daimen asked incredulously. Zorian stared at him. “He’s your brother. You

live in the same city. You can visit him anytime you want.”

“So?” Zorian asked, inclining his head uncomprehendingly.

“Are you honestly telling me that in all these years, you haven’t seriously talked to our brother even

once?” Daimen asked. His tone was pleading, as if begging Zorian to tell him he’s wrong.

“That’s what I’m saying, yes,” Zorian nodded. Why would Daimen expect anything else from him?

“Doesn’t the restart end in a massive invasion?” Daimen frowned. Zorian nodded again. “What does

Fortov do during the invasion?”

“Presumably he reaches the academy shelters and spends the night there, along with the other

students,” Zorian shrugged.

Admittedly, the shelters hadn’t been very safe during the one occasion he had actually experienced

them, but that was when Red Robe had actively been helping the invaders by feeding them

information. Without his help, the shelters were actually pretty safe.

“Presumably? You never checked?” Daimen asked. Zorian shook his head in denial. “Zorian, for

heaven’s sake…”

“I don’t see why you’re so surprised by this,” Zorian told him honestly. “Fortov is my second least-

favorite person in the whole family, right after Father. Of course I never bothered to check up on

him.”

Daimen opened his mouth, as if he wanted to continue that argument, but then just shook his head

and gave up.

“Nevermind,” Daimen sighed. “Did you have any interactions with him during all this time?”

“Actually, yes,” Zorian said. “He pushes this one girl into a purple creeper patch near the end of

every restart and then comes to me to beg for a healing salve. I used to just avoid being home

whenever he comes, but these days it’s not even necessary. He never comes to find me if I stay at

Imaya’s place.”

“He pushes this girl into a purple creeper patch regardless of what you change in a restart?” Daimen

said, frowning.

“As far as I can tell, yes,” Zorian confirmed. “The girl has a huge crush on him, if that means

anything to you.”

Daimen made a thoughtful hum. “It’s better than nothing, I guess. But really, Zorian, must you be so

petty and callous? I know you and Fortov didn’t get along as kids, but this sort of attitude is a little

too much. You nurse your grudges way too deeply.”

“It’s easy for you to call for peace and understanding,” Zorian said, folding his arms over his chest

defiantly. “It’s not you who had to deal with Fortov’s crappy attitude over the years.”

“All I’m saying is that maybe you should give him a chance,” Daimen said. “Like you did with Kirielle

when you decided to take her with you to Cyoria. If you were wrong about her, who’s to say you

weren’t wrong about Fortov as well?”

“But I wasn’t really wrong about her,” Zorian pointed out. “I didn’t want her around because I felt she

was a selfish little blabbermouth that would distract me from my studies and tattle on me when she

returns to Mother. That’s all still true, it’s just that I no longer care about that. Provided I actually

manage to find a way out of this time loop, my future is set. I can afford a distraction or two, and

Kirielle running off and revealing my plans and activities to Mother is irrelevant because our parents

can’t stop me anymore. I’m so skilled and powerful that I can do whatever I want, Mother and Father

be damned.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Daimen didn’t grow even more frustrated at this response, like Zorian

thought he would. Instead he just gave him a sad smile and shook his head ruefully.

“Mother and Father are so concerned about me making a mistake that they’re rushing over to Koth

even as we speak to talk me out of my marriage to Orissa, but they fail to notice a crisis developing

right in front of them,” he said. “We really are one messed up family, aren’t we? And the terrifying

thing in all this is that I will forget all about this very soon, won’t I? After the summer festival, it will be

as if none of this ever happened. That’s so unfair. How the hell can I fix a problem if I have no

memory of its existence?”

“I don’t think you could fix our family, even if you had all the time in the world,” Zorian told him. “But

yes, the reality of the time loop is rather soul crushing if one really thinks about it. You’re dealing with

this pretty well, all things considered.”

“It’s mostly because I have avoided thinking about it too deeply, I think,” Daimen said. “Now that

we’re getting closer to the time limit, I find my thoughts wandering towards it more and more.

Especially since I’ve done so much in these last few weeks. I’ve realized so many things. Important

things. It’s frightening and infuriating to realize I must lose it all.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about the notebooks I’m transferring between restarts for various

people,” Zorian noted. “If it’s really so important, you can just write it down and hand it to me for

safekeeping.”

“Oh?” Daimen smiled. “So I actually qualify for that prestigious service? I must say, the way you’ve

been talking about our family, I was starting to get a little worried. What if you intended to just forget

about me in all future restarts? You already know how to find the orb, after all, and I know you aren’t

exactly a big fan of me…”

Zorian gave him a mildly uncomfortable look. He had been thinking of something like that. Though

his eldest brother would surely be useful in tracking down and recovering the rest of the pieces of

the Key, it bothered Zorian a great deal to rely on Daimen for anything. It just… felt wrong.

Convincing Daimen to help them was a time consuming task, too, so was it really worth the time to

include him in their efforts?

In the end he realized he was just looking for excuses. They needed the help that Daimen could

provide. If nothing else, it wasn’t very fair to Zach to sabotage their chances of getting out of the time

loop just because he had a problem with Daimen.

Plus, the truth was…

“I was wrong about you, okay?” Zorian said with a heavy sigh. “I still think you’re very annoying,

but… you’re not as bad as the Daimen that lived inside my head.”

It hurt him to say it, but it was the truth. Maybe Daimen had changed after he had moved out of the

house and stopped interacting with Zorian or maybe Zorian’s image of him had never been all that

reliable to begin with. Whatever the truth, this Daimen was more helpful and reasonable than the

dark giant that had loomed over him in the past.

“I’m not sure if I’d call it wrong, exactly. Regardless of their reasons, the other two siblings don’t like

me much either. I’m clearly an abject failure as an older brother. It’s a sobering realization,” Daimen

mused. After a second of silence, he shook his head as if to clear it up. “But enough of depressing

topics like that. You mentioned the notebooks you’re carrying across restarts for Xvim and the

others. As it happens, I’ve taken the time to talk with Xvim yesterday. He told me about the trade

deals you two are trying to set up with various experts.”

“Yes, it’s honestly one of my better ideas,” Zorian nodded. “It’s already showing results and there is

every indication we can do even better in future restarts. I don’t think every single one of those

experts will agree to a trade in the end, but quite a few are clearly open to the idea if approached by

someone they actually respect. Are you thinking of helping Xvim convince people?”

“No,” Daimen shook his head. “I’ll be pleased to help if Xvim asks for it, but my involvement could

easily turn the initiative into an unmitigated disaster. You probably think of my fame as purely

beneficial, but the truth is it causes many mages to view me as a threat. A lot of them would never

trade anything with me. Why do you think I never learned how to cast the Gate spell before you

came along?”

“I see,” Zorian said thoughtfully. “If not that, though, why did you mention Xvim’s efforts?”

“Well...” began Daimen. “Gathering secret knowledge from Altazia’s many experts is a commendable

initiative, but it is hard work and it will likely only provide incremental improvement to your

capabilities.”

“True,” Zorian said. “But what’s the alternative? All the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked.”

“Not necessarily,” Daimen said with a grin. “What is and is not low-hanging fruit depends on a

person’s abilities, and you have something that few other people do – an ability to traverse between

continents with ease.”

Zorian thought about it for a second and then motioned for Daimen to continue. He didn’t quite see

what he was getting at.

“What I’m saying is that Koth would be a good place to extend your magic gathering initiative,”

Daimen continued. “Unlike Xlotic, which is relatively well-connected to Altazia due to the existence of

the teleport network, Koth is quite remote. Despite that, they use the same basic magic system that

we do, unlike Hsan. This makes them a great place to find unexpected spell combinations and novel

alchemy. Who knows what kind of… low-hanging fruit can be obtained by combining our magical

traditions with those of Koth?”

Zorian raised his eyebrow at his eldest brother. Daimen looked quite animated as he spoke of the

idea.

“And I suppose you’re volunteering to run this sort of initiative?” Zorian asked.

“Ha ha…” Daimen laughed nervously. “To be perfectly honest, doing this was one of my objectives

in coming to Koth. I was in the process of laying the groundwork for it even before the time loop

started.”

“Well… that’s great then,” Zorian told him honestly. “I don’t see an issue with the idea, then.”

“Great!” Daimen said, giving him a sunny smile reminiscent of Zach. “It’s just that this time loop

came too soon and not all of the preparations were complete. I may need a tiny, tiny loan from my

dearest brother to start things up…”

- break -

A few days later, Daimen was returned to Koth. The orb was left in Cyoria, since Daimen figured it

was safer that way and because Zach had really taken a liking to it. Busy as he was with other

things, Zorian decided to delegate all orb-related tinkering to Zach. Considering how much more

strongly the orb reacted to him, Zach may be in a better position to uncover its secrets anyway.

Today, though, Zorian had received a somewhat unusual request: Taiven wanted to talk to him. In

private.

Normally such a request wouldn’t be particularly notable, but Zorian had actually not seen or heard

from Taiven at all since their attack on the Ibasan base. If it were not for Alanic’s assurances that

she had survived the battle in perfect health, Zorian would have been honestly worried for her. As it

was, it was obvious she had been avoiding him for some reason. He had actually thought about

tracking her down to ask what was happening, but the end of the restart was approaching and so

many things were vying for his time and attention…

No matter. Since she’d reached out to him all of a sudden, he would presumably find out what was

bothering her quite soon.

When they met he offered to teleport them to some empty, quiet place, but she would have none of

that. Apparently when she said she wanted to talk in private, she meant she would bring him to her

family training hall – the same one where they sometimes sparred against one another in previous

restarts. She seemed to find the place calming and reassuring.

“So what’s this about?” he asked her.

“I’m worried,” she said. She sounded worried, too.

Zorian waited for a few seconds for a clarification of what exactly she was worried about, but Taiven

seemed to have trouble finding the words. She paced around the training hall like a caged tiger,

scowling and shaking her head.

“No, seriously, what is this about?” Zorian asked.

She still didn’t say anything.

“Is it time loop related?” he added after a bit of thought.

“Of course it’s time loop related!” she burst out at him. She looked like she was going to snap at him

but quickly managed to reign herself in. She shook her head sadly. “And, in a way, it isn’t. I don’t

even know why I called you here. It’s stupid. I should just–“

“Don’t even dare try to send me away now,” Zorian warned her.

“I won’t, I won’t,” she assured him. “I’m just… I just realized I probably lost you as a friend.”

Zorian gave her an incredulous look.

“And why would you think that?” Zorian asked her curiously.

“Because this time loop has changed you,” she told him. “You already feel like a stranger to me.

You’re so hard to read these days, and so very capable. Everything I can do, you can do better. And

that’s only going to get worse as you spend time in here. By the time you get out, why would you

need me anymore? By the time this is all resolved, I will probably no longer have a friend.”

“Eh, you’re being overdramatic,” Zorian told her. He knew he was probably sounding a little

dismissive, but he honestly didn’t know what else to tell her. “I know you don’t remember this, but I

spend a lot of time interacting with you in various restarts. There is zero chance that I’m just going to

forget you.”

“Well yes, I’m sure that you won’t just forget me,” she huffed. “But any concern you have for me will

be of the… well, patronizing kind. You’ll be so above me it isn’t even funny. We won’t be equals, you

know? It’ll be you, a secret archmage, keeping an eye on his old friend for old-time’s sake. It’s very

depressing.”

“Ah,” said Zorian slowly.

There was a lot of truth in what she was saying. There was really no way their friendship would be

the same as it had been before the time loop. However, that was not necessarily a bad thing. His

past self was… somewhat bitter with Taiven. He had not considered them to be close friends,

something that Taiven seemed rather oblivious to. Much like she was oblivious to his past crush on

her, really.

So yes, their relationship would never be the same. But was that a bad thing? While Taiven might

lament the loss of their earlier friendship, Zorian couldn’t help but wonder whether there would have

even been a friendship if he hadn’t got stuck in this time loop. Would he have eventually overcome

the hurt of having his love confession laughed at and reestablished close bonds with her? Probably.

But it would have taken quite some time and he wasn’t sure Taiven would have stuck around him for

long enough to see that happen.

“Why did you ever decide to become friends with me, anyway?” Zorian asked her curiously. “This will

sound a little self-deprecating, but I don’t think I was that good of a friend.”

“Ha ha!” she laughed, her mood brightening a little. “Well, it’s good that you’re so honest. That’s the

one change I like about the new you.”

She picked up a practice doll from a nearby bench and started making minute corrections to it.

Zorian couldn’t see what they were meant to do, so he assumed she was just stalling for time and

giving herself something to do.

“Since you were willing to be a little self-deprecating, I will follow your example,” Taiven eventually

said. “I wasn’t a very good friend either. Either to you or to anyone else. I’m too blunt and impulsive

and I can’t judge the situation and people very well. Most people actually find me pretty insulting and

aggravating.”

Zorian was going to say something to cheer her up, but then he remembered that her nickname for

him was ‘Roach’. He still remembered the argument he’d had with her when she had tried to

convince him that being compared to cockroaches was a compliment because they were amazing

animals, famed for their adaptability and resilience. Eventually he caved in and (reluctantly) let her

call him that, but he could see why some people would be deathly insulted if she were to pull that

kind of stunt on them.

“I actually have very few friends aside from you,” she continued. “Aside from you, only my two

teammates seem to like me. But Urik and Oran… they’re old friends. I’ll never be anything other than

the third wheel if I hang out around them.”

“But I didn’t have any other friends,” Zorian surmised.

“Yeah,” Taiven told him. “You annoyed me, I annoyed you, but we got along with each other anyway.

Maybe you weren’t a good friend, but I wasn’t much better, so it didn’t matter. But now you’re getting

better, and I… I can’t.”

She hugged the practice doll like a little girl trying to comfort herself with a favorite toy. It was a

somewhat weird sight, since the practice doll was the size of an adult human and creepily

featureless.

Zorian stared at her, wondering how to handle this. He didn’t see how he could convince Taiven that

the nature of their friendship wouldn’t change once he got out of the time loop. It would be an

obvious lie. Of course, Zorian did not consider this change to be a bad thing, but to explain why he

felt that way he would have to…

…eh, why not. If he was really honest with himself, he always had wanted to do this. He just hadn’t

had the courage to go through with it.

“I had a crush on you once,” he told her.

“Eh!?” she exclaimed, jerking in surprise and dropping the practice doll. It clattered to the floor,

leaving deafening silence in its wake. For a moment, anyway. “What do you mean, you had a crush

on me!? When!? How!?”

“Do you remember that time I asked you out on a date?” he asked her.

“What? Are we… are we talking about that time…” she fumbled. Zorian nodded anyway. He had

only ever asked her to a date once in the time they knew each other, so she couldn’t be thinking of

anything else. “But, uh, isn’t that when I… laughed at you?”

Zorian gave her a long-suffering look.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Yes, it is. It wasn’t a joke, Taiven. I was dead serious about it.”

“Ah ha ha…” she laughed nervously. “Wow, that’s… really something.”

She buried her face into her hands for a moment.

“Gods above, I’m so stupid sometimes,” she mumbled into her hands.

Then she punched him in the shoulder.

“Hey!” he protested in mild outrage. He’d normally be more bothered about the sudden physical

violence, but eh. It was Taiven. He expected that sort of thing from her. “What the hell!?”

“And you’re stupid too!” she told him. “Why the hell would you just accept me laughing at you like

that if you were being serious!?”

“Well what the hell was I supposed to do!?” Zorian protested.

“Tell me I was wrong! Ask me out again! Get angry before storming off!” Taiven shouted. “Anything!

Not just pretend everything was fine and retreat with a tail between your legs like a wounded puppy.

I mean… I kept joking about that long afterwards and you still didn’t say anything. At least if I knew I

wouldn’t have been rubbing salt into your wounds like that!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zorian grunted. “In the end I still got an answer to my question. You clearly

weren’t interested in me that way. You found the very idea laughable, even.”

“Oh come on!” she whined. “That’s not fair. I wasn’t laughing because the idea of me dating you was

so ridiculous. I was laughing because I gave you love advice urging you to ask people out and you

followed it by immediately asking me out. It just… seemed to me like you were making a joke. In

retrospect, I was being stupid, but… You should have said something, damn it!”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as the two of them refused to look at each other and sat

there in silence.

“We’re going out on a date,” Taiven suddenly declared.

Zorian gave her a weird look.

“But I’m over you,” he pointed out. “That’s why I said I ‘had’ a crush on you. It’s all in the past for

me.”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. We’re still having a date.”

“Don’t I get any say in this?” Zorian asked, an amused smile on his face.

“What are you talking about,” Taiven sniffed disdainfully. “You’re the one who asked me to a date.

I’m just accepting your invitation… with a bit of a delay.”

Zorian laughed at the uniquely Taiven logic.

“A bit of a delay, she says… You really are something,” he said, shaking his head. “Fine. Have it

your way.”

“Good,” she said simply, then looked away, as if too shy to meet his eyes.

Zorian smiled. He had been telling the truth, and he really didn’t have a crush for her any longer. Any

romantic feeling he’d had for her had petered out during his long stay in the time loop.

But he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t kind of glad about this.

Chapter 072

Crossroads

He never really realized how beautiful Cyoria could be in the evening.

That was Zorian’s thought as he and Taiven wandered around Cyoria, checking up street stands and

discussing casual topics. Most settlements grew dark and quiet as evening approached, giving off a

dangerous and sinister atmosphere, but Cyoria was a major metropolis and this was the week

before the summer festival. The streets were lively and well-illuminated, with lots of people

wandering around and lots of street vendors setting up stands and trying to convince these people to

part with their money for sweets, trinkets and so on.

Zorian would never have guessed that he would enjoy this kind of atmosphere. In the past, he had

found occasions like this to be rather aggravating and avoided them whenever possible. Of course,

in the past, Zorian would get headaches just from being in a crowd and he didn’t have a pretty girl to

keep him company.

He gave a sideways glance to Taiven, who was walking beside him. Even though this was just a

‘friendly’ date and not anything romantic, he couldn’t help but treat it fairly seriously. He had chosen

to wear a fairly formal outfit for the evening, took her to an expensive restaurant and even invited her

for a round of dance. He was initially worried he was taking things too far, but considering Taiven

came to the date wearing a very expensive-looking dress and had kept her usual cheery disposition

throughout the entire evening, he seemed to have made a good choice.

“I’ve got to say, this went a lot better than I thought it would,” Taiven suddenly said. Zorian raised an

eyebrow at her. “Wait, that came out kind of wrong. What I mean is… considering how bad both of

us are at the social side of things… umm…”

Zorian gave her a faint smile and decided to save her from further awkwardness.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I get your point. I’m also pleasantly surprised at how well this turned out. I guess

we’re better at this than we thought.”

“Well, in my case it’s mostly trial and error, so I can’t feel too proud about myself,” Taiven laughed

lightly. “I went to quite a few dates in the past. Plenty of guys get attracted to me for my looks and

don’t quite comprehend what they’re getting into until they experience it firsthand. Trust me, my first

date was a real disaster.”

“Oh? You’ll have to tell me that story sometime,” Zorian teased.

“No way,” she said, giving him a playful shove and causing him to stumble to the side a little. He

nearly crashed into an elderly couple walking past them, but managed to correct himself in time.

“The less people know that story, the better. Hell, sometimes I wish I could forget that memory

myself. But then I’d probably make the same mistakes all over again, so I guess it’s a good thing I

can’t forget.”

She frowned suddenly, staring at the night sky for a moment before giving him a curious look.

“What?” he prodded.

“What about you? Do you do this often?” she asked him.

“Do what often? Go on a date with you?” Zorian asked, amused.

“Well not with me,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I mean in general. You’ve been in this time loop for

years. Surely you’ve gone on a few dates in all that time.”

“A few,” Zorian admitted.

“Ha!” she said, pointing her finger at him triumphantly. “I knew it!”

Zorian opened his mouth to respond but Taiven immediately stopped him.

“Don’t you try and bewitch me with your honeyed words,” she said in mock outrage. “I bet you tell

them to every girl you pursue.”

“But I haven’t even said anything yet,” Zorian pointed out. “Really, I have no intention of justifying

myself to you. Based on what you just told me about your dating experiences, you went to a lot more

dates than I have. You heartbreaker.”

They kept talking and meandering through the streets for a while longer, until eventually the

conversation wound down and they both seemed to reach an unspoken agreement that it was

getting late and that it was time for the date to end. Zorian couldn’t help but get progressively quieter

and more contemplative as the date grew to a close.

They had been walking in silence for several minutes when Taiven decided to speak up again.

“What’s wrong?” Taiven asked. “Why did you get so depressed all of a sudden? Was it something I

said?”

“Hm?” Zorian said, broken out of his reverie. “No, no. It’s not you. I’m just thinking. It’s… well, it’s

probably for the best if I don’t tell you.”

“Zorian, don’t make me hit you,” she said warningly.

“Fine, if you insist…” Zorian said, giving her an awkward chuckle. “I was just thinking how utterly

depressing it is that you will not remember anything that happened tonight in future restarts. We

cleared the air between us, enjoyed a wonderful evening… and none of that will matter when the

loop resets again. You will revert to the same suspicious, borderline hostile Taiven that I get at the

start of every restart. It takes half of each restart just to convince you the time loop is real and that I

haven’t been lying to you since I met you or been replaced by an imposter, nevermind anything

else.”

Taiven winced, looking away guiltily.

“No, don’t feel guilty,” Zorian told her, shaking his head. “It’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. It’s one

thing for old, experienced mages like Xvim, Alanic and Daimen to believe in the time loop. They’ve

dealt with many complicated situations in their life and experienced plenty of strange magic. People

like you and me? Well… did you know I spent the first six restarts going to classes like everything

was just fine, hoping everything would return to normal if I just kept my head down and behaved like

usual?”

Taiven gave him a surprised look.

“Yes, I know,” Zorian nodded. “It’s kind of stupid, but that’s what I did. Your reaction is pretty good,

all things considered. It’s just that I really like how this turned out, and yet… I realize this will

probably forever remain an empty memory in my head. I can’t replicate the chain of events that led

to this in the real world. I’m not even sure I can replicate it in future restarts. So I guess I’m just trying

to figure out what I should do about this in the future.”

A short, awkward silence descended on the scene, causing Zorian to wince a little inside at his own

poor timing. Why did he insist on telling her this now? He just couldn’t let things end on a positive

note, could he?

“Sorry,” he said quietly.

He suddenly felt like he could understand some of Zach’s attitude towards people around them. Was

this why Zach no longer bothered to actively befriend any of their classmates or friendly strangers,

even though he clearly used to do so extensively in the past? The way Zorian was feeling this

evening… perhaps this was how Zach felt all the time during his earlier years? Making friends and

experiencing life changing moments with them over and over again, only for the other party to forget

all about it in the next restart…

“Don’t be sorry,” Taiven said. “What are friends for if they can’t even listen to you whine from time to

time? Besides, it was a fun evening. One moment of depressing seriousness isn’t going to ruin it.”

Eventually they reached a crossroads where their paths separated and stopped. Zorian wracked his

head for a moment, trying to figure out what was the appropriate way to end the date. They weren’t

actually romantically involved, after all.

“So… I guess this is it,” he eventually said lamely.

“I guess it is,” Taiven agreed, equally lamely.

After a second of hesitation, with neither of them making a move to leave, Taiven spoke up again.

“Hey,” she suddenly said. “So, I know you said you were totally over me… and I totally respect that!

But just in case you ever change your mind about that, you should really work on your body a little.”

“What?” Zorian asked, surprised.

“You know. Start running and exercising. Pick up some kind of physically intensive outdoor hobby.

Put on some muscle,” she said. “I’m not saying you stand no chance otherwise, but…”

Zorian huffed at her, torn between amusement and exasperation. “But it would do wonders to make

you see me as relationship material, right?” he surmised. Taiven nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll keep that

in mind.”

Well. Taiven’s preferences in men aside, he had been rather annoyed with his lack of endurance

lately. It made things more difficult than they needed to be and forced him to constantly drink potions

just to keep up with Zach and others. It wasn’t a huge issue in the time loop, but such an extensive

use of potions was inadvisable in the long term. Once he was out of the time loop, he’d probably end

up working on his physique on his own initiative, just so he could maintain the sort of pace he was

used to by now…

In any case, this was the end of their evening together. After saying their goodbyes, both of them

went their separate ways.

Zorian deliberately took the scenic route back to Imaya’s place, consumed in his own thoughts and

in no hurry to get back to sleep.

- break -

Simulacrum number two, stationed in Koth, was pretty pleased with how things were going.

Being stationed in Koth was usually a rather boring task, since it meant being stranded in an alien

land whose language and writing he did not understand. He couldn’t read any of the local books, he

couldn’t engage in casual conversations with people and he couldn’t cast any spells without good

reason.

This time, however, he was living in the Taramatula estate. The Taramatula knew very well he was

just a simulacrum, but this didn’t seem to bother them much. They treated him just as well as they

did the real Zorian – they gave him a room to sleep in, a teacher to help him master the local

language, and access to things like paper and building materials for his research.

Plus, there was Torun and Kirma, Daimen’s two teammates who were currently trapped in the

Taramatula estate. Perhaps because they currently had nothing better to do and were bored out of

their minds, or maybe because the original really left an impression on them, but both of them

proved very receptive to the simulacrum’s offer of magic exchange.

Kirma was the more conventional of the two. Although Zorian had never seen divinations being used

in such a way before he’d met her, she claimed she was using pretty standard magic that could be

acquired from ‘practically anywhere’. Even her flower-shaped divination aid was simply something

she had commissioned from a professional artificer, not something she had made herself. Thus, she

didn’t feel much need to keep her methods secret. In exchange for the many rare and exotic spells

that Zorian had acquired in the time loop, she was entirely willing to show him some tricks of her

trade and give him guidance on how best to develop his divination skills.

In addition, she gave him a list of people to talk to in case he wanted to pursue a career in the field,

completely unprompted by the simulacrum. He suspected she had some kind of deal with these

people to send young talents their way, but he decided to give them a visit in one of the future

restarts anyway.

As for Torun, he was pursuing a very rare and exotic field of magic that involved extracting and

preserving organs of magical creatures and then using specialized control spells to turn them into

something of an extension of the caster. It was not a popular field of study, both due to having been

created relatively recently and because it existed in something of a legal limbo in most places, so

Torun was actually ecstatic when the simulacrum showed an interest in it. Most people considered

his magic to be somewhat creepy and off-putting.

The simulacrum very much doubted the original would dive particularly deeply into the field. It would

take a lot of time to get anywhere with it and it didn’t provide anything they desperately needed.

However, some of the spells and techniques Torun used to control and make use of his eyes could

potentially be used to improve coordination between Zorian and his golems, or even Zorian and his

simulacrums.

Of course, such developments were too general to be the cause of the simulacrum’s current

happiness with his situation. The truth was, he had recently dodged a huge bullet!

Mother and Father were coming to Koth, and someone had to pick them up and ‘smuggle’ them into

the Taramatula estate. That someone was, of course, Daimen… but Daimen also insisted that

Zorian accompany him in this task. He wouldn’t budge on this in the slightest, stubbornly insisting it

was Zorian’s family duty to accompany him to pick up their parents.

Sometimes it was good to be just a simulacrum. While the original had to explain to Mother and

Father what he was doing in Koth, he was told instead to stay hidden from them at all times in order

to minimize the amount of necessary explanations. An order he was only too happy to obey.

He was currently safely sequestered in the corner of the Taramatula library (of course the estate had

its own library), humming a discordant tune to himself and reading a children’s book in an attempt to

hone his ability to read the local writing. Sadly, language skills were one of those things that were

almost impossible for him to transfer to the original in any meaningful manner, so this was something

done more for his own amusement than any long-term gain.

As some point Orissa had also entered the room, but he paid little heed to that, giving her a short

greeting and then getting back to his book. He had monopolized one of the three tables in the room,

stacking it full of books that he judged to be relatively easy to understand, but that still left plenty of

space for her to work with. He didn’t react even when she looked over his shoulder to see what he

was reading. He wasn’t ashamed of his choice of reading in the slightest.

Everybody had to start somewhere. Plus, the book had pretty pictures.

However, Orissa didn’t just pick up a book from the library and leave, like the simulacrum expected

her to. Instead she fetched a chair from a nearby empty table and sat down next to him.

“Yes?” he asked, curious. It was unusual for Orissa to deliberately seek him out like this, to say the

least. Aside from that one time when she invited the original for a discussion via Daimen, she had

been quite reserved.

“I’m worried,” she said simply. “Daimen and your… other self should be back in a few hours.”

“Ah,” the simulacrum said, suddenly understanding what this was about. “You’re worried about

Mother and Father coming here.”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “I know I’m being rude here, but I was wondering if you could tell me a little

about your parents.”

“Me?” the simulacrum asked incredulously.

“I was told simulacrums retain most of the memory of the original,” Orissa said blandly.

“You know that wasn’t my point,” the simulacrum complained. Orissa smiled faintly at him. “I mean,

the original doesn’t exactly have the best relationship with the rest of his family. What could I

possibly tell you that Daimen hadn’t already?”

“Daimen got really evasive about his parents once it became obvious they don’t approve of our

marriage,” Orissa said, shaking her head. “He says I shouldn’t worry, that he’ll handle it, but how can

I possibly not worry? He clearly thinks the world of them and here they are, coming all the way to

another continent to talk him out of marrying me.”

“This will probably sound a little flippant, but there’s probably no need for you to worry so much over

this,” the simulacrum told her. “He’s their darling genius son. Whatever he wants, he’s going to get it.

It’s been that way since forever.”

“It would still mean a lot to me if you could tell me a little about them before they arrive,” Orissa

insisted.

Simulacrum number two gave her a contemplative look. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure if telling her about

Mother and Father would be a good idea. His depiction of them would no doubt be really negative,

and might end up worsening tensions between his parents and Orissa as a result. That probably

wasn’t in anyone’s interest, least of all Orissa’s.

“You’re basically asking me to stick my hand into the fire, here,” the simulacrum said.

“I guess I am,” she admitted.

“Then let me ask you something first,” the simulacrum said. “Are you interested in Daimen only

because of his mind magic bloodline thingy?”

He expected Orissa to be either shocked at the question or explode with outrage. He did not expect

her to laugh at him.

“What, are you worried I’m taking advantage of your big brother?” she asked with a grin.

“Just a little,” the simulacrum admitted. “He’s an empath, so he should be hard to fool… but you’re a

talented mind mage from a family specializing in mind magic. Anything is possible.”

“And here Daimen thinks you hate him,” Orissa said with a sigh. “To answer your question… it’s

definitely not irrelevant. I love him, but if he didn’t have this innate mind magic affinity of his, I

probably would not choose to marry him. I love my family too, and I need to keep their interests in

mind. However, do you honestly think your brother is marrying me purely for love?”

The simulacrum gave her a surprised look.

“By marrying me, he is marrying into nobility and wealth. It’s not his only concern, but it’s hardly

irrelevant. If I was a poor orphan, or even just a well-to-do middle-class girl, he would have never

agreed to marry me. So no, I don’t think I’m taking advantage of him. We both have our ambitions.

It’s just fortunate that we can fulfil them with someone we actually like.”

“Huh,” the simulacrum said thoughtfully.

After a few seconds of silence, Orissa spoke up again.

“So can I get an answer to my question, then?” she asked.

“Sure,” the simulacrum shrugged. “So, the first thing you should know about our parents is that

they’re very driven and ambitious people. Our father, Andir Kazinski, was the fourth son of a wealthy

farmer. Our mother, Cikan Kazinski, was the only daughter of one of the few remaining witches, who

raised her alone after her husband left her. Father knew that as a fourth son, he would never inherit

anything. Thus, when he was 15 years old, he managed to procure a small loan from his father and

left home to open his own business. He married our mother less than a year later. Over the years,

they had turned that small initial business into a local power that has made them quite wealthy and

respected. Well, not by your standards, but…”

“It’s impressive,” Orissa nodded. “They reached surprising heights from such humble roots. That

must have taken a lot of work.”

“They did work very hard to get where they are,” the simulacrum agreed. He had his disagreements

with Mother and Father, but they had very much earned their wealth and status. Of course, their

success involved just as much scheming as it did hard work, but he was pretty sure Orissa

understood that part without him having to spell it out. “But while such attitude brought them

success, it does have some consequences. Bluntly put, they view almost everything through the

prism of how it will reflect on the family reputation and finances. This marriage between you and

Daimen… even if Mother and Father thought this was a good thing for Daimen–”

“That’s it! That’s what I’ve been missing all this time! They don’t see the benefit for the family as a

whole!” Orissa exclaimed suddenly. “Of course. After putting so much money and effort into Daimen,

they naturally expect to see some kind of return for their trouble. Ah… we’ll continue this later, okay?

I need to make some arrangements.”

The simulacrum watched, surprised and amused, as Orissa hurriedly left the library. He wasn’t

entirely sure what happened there, but it would seem that Orissa didn’t actually perceive his parents’

attitude as wrong. Considering the sort of background she comes from and her explanation about

how her marriage with Daimen came to be… he probably shouldn’t be surprised.

“Well, at least now I know why Daimen likes her so much,” simulacrum mused quietly to himself.

“She’s like a younger version of Mother! Sometimes life really is a comedy.”

- break -

In normal circumstances, picking up Mother and Father from Jasuka harbor and bringing them to the

Taramatula estate would have been a simple matter. Now that Daimen was under such intense

scrutiny, however, this became a huge, complicated endeavor. The Taramatula mobilized a large

portion of their manpower to disrupt and distract surveillance operations that kept an eye on

Daimen’s movements. When Daimen and Zorian finally left the estate, five other decoy teams,

shapeshifted in their likeness, also left at the same time to muddy the water further. Then, all six

teams started teleporting around randomly for a while, before each of them made their way to a

completely different city.

Despite all these preparations, the whole plan would have surely failed if Daimen had really gone to

pick up Mother and Father during this trip. In reality, the whole operation was simply a giant

distraction. Its main purpose was to mask the fact that Zorian had created a third simulacrum while

they were teleporting around randomly through Koth and then sent it away to hide while they drew

everyone’s attention. When Daimen and Zorian returned to the Taramatula estate, Zorian’s brand

new simulacrum slowly made his way to Jasuka and then opened a hidden gate between the city

and the estate, allowing Daimen to enter and leave the city too quickly for anyone to really intercept

him.

Naturally, this meant that Zorian’s involvement was absolutely crucial for the operation’s success. If

it weren’t for that, Zorian would have never agreed to take part in it, no matter how much Daimen

begged and threatened. How the hell was he supposed to explain his presence in Koth to Mother

and Father? No matter how poor their knowledge of magic was, they would surely recognize

dimensional gates and simulacrums as high-level magic that should be way beyond him.

“Even if you hadn’t come with me, they would have still realized you were in Koth,” Daimen told him.

“You are too well known among the Taramatula by now. Someone would have surely let them know

about you, whether intentionally or accidentally.”

“Maybe, but that wouldn’t have been my problem,” Zorian countered. “I’d be back in Cyoria, and it

would be your job to figure out an explanation that made sense and deal with their attitude.”

Daimen scowled at him, saying nothing.

In any case, the initial meeting was much calmer and more subdued than Zorian expected. The

steam ship that carried their parents languidly entered Jasuka harbor and then disgorged an endless

stream of passengers and cargo, temporarily creating a miniature pandemonium as the throng of

disembarking people and dockworkers shouted and pushed at one another. By the time Daimen and

Zorian had found Mother and Father, they already looked absolutely exhausted and were in no

mood to start a fight. They were surprised to see Zorian in Koth, of course, but mostly they were glad

to have an extra person help out with the luggage and whatnot.

“Aren’t you supposed to watch Kirielle?” Mother asked him, frowning.

“I am,” Zorian said. “I’m just here to pick you up. I’ll be back in Cyoria before nightfall.”

“How?” Father asked. “I thought no one could teleport over such distances. And teleportation is

supposed to be advanced magic, anyway.”

“It’s a secret,” Zorian simply said.

Father made an indecipherable hum and said nothing further.

“Whatever it is, I hope you can use the same method to send us home when the time comes,”

Mother said, sounding worn and tired. “Ship travel doesn’t agree with me. I think I lost a whole year

of my life getting here. It would be great if we could avoid boarding a ship for the return trip.”

And that was it. Nothing more was spoken about Zorian’s presence. Especially since, when the

group had finally stepped through the dimensional gate and entered the Taramatula estate, they

were greeted by Orissa and the rest of the Taramatula delegation. At that point, the mystery of

Zorian’s presence on another continent was the furthest thing from their minds.

Naturally, Mother and Father were full of smiles and compliments. The tiredness they displayed

before Daimen and Zorian seemed to instantly disappear and they busied themselves with handing

out very expensive gifts and endlessly praising the thoughtfulness and generosity of their hosts. If

Zorian hadn’t known in advance what their purpose for coming here was, he would have never

guessed they disapproved of the marriage.

Two days passed. Mother and Father slowly settled into the Taramatula estate. Zorian tried to stay

away from the place as much as possible, not wanting to get tangled into Daimen’s mess too much,

and the simulacrum he had left in the estate did the same. As such, he didn’t really know how their

attempts to talk Daimen out of the marriage were progressing. He had his own things to worry about.

Now that he had a simulacrum outside the Taramatula estate, he hurriedly arranged for a group of

Silent Doorway Adepts to be transported to Koth, next to one of the local Bakora Gates.

Happily, the operation to acquire the gate key was a full success. Both Zorian and the Silent

Doorway Adepts were ecstatic about this. For the aranea, this gate key represented access to a

virgin territory awash with opportunities. For Zorian, it was a way to ensuring easy access to Koth

without having to rely on Daimen. Plus, he suspected that having this key would make it

much, much easier to convince the Silent Doorway Adepts to cooperate with him in future restarts.

Now, however, Zorian was back in the Taramatula estate. His parents had specifically called for him

to come see them. In all honesty, Zorian had totally expected this to happen. They had taken his

presence in Koth in stride when they had first come, but now that they had time to rest, talk with

people and think about things, they no doubt realized there was something very much off about him.

The only thing he hadn’t been certain of was whether the restart would have come to an end before

this happened.

He was currently standing in one of Taramatula meeting rooms, Father and Mother standing in front

of him. Originally, Daimen had wanted to be present for the talk as well, but they had shooed him

away, insisting this was a ‘private talk’. That had been kind of amusing. It was not often that they

treated their favorite son in such fashion. Apparently, whatever ‘arrangements’ Orissa did were

insufficient, and they still opposed the marriage. And since Daimen stubbornly refused to give up on

the idea, they were currently not terribly fond of him.

“We spoke with Daimen about you,” Mother said suddenly.

She had a complex, worried look on her face, as if she was having trouble deciding how to handle

this. Father, on the other hand, stayed silent and stony-faced, his emotions indecipherable.

“Yes?” Zorian responded blandly.

“He tells us you’re incredibly powerful and competent. Far more than you let on,” she said.

“True,” Zorian admitted. He didn’t see the point of hiding it. They already knew he could move across

continents in a quick, reliable manner.

“But why would you keep something like that hidden from us?” Mother asked imploringly. “Having

another genius in the family is a joyous thing. Surely you don’t think we would have stood in your

way?”

“Ah, you mean… like you’re not standing in the way of Daimen’s marriage?” Zorian asked

innocently.

“That’s something completely different!” Mother said, scowling at him. She quickly reined herself in,

however. “And besides, we’re not standing in Daimen’s way. We’re simply… trying to pull him back

for taking a wrong turn. If he stubbornly refuses to heed our advice, we will reluctantly accept it, not

sabotage his life in revenge.”

“What she’s saying,” Father suddenly spoke up, “is that we already disagree with what you’re doing

with your life, so what’s one disagreement more? You can just throw one of your juvenile hissy fits,

just like you always do, and we’ll grit our teeth and bear it because at the end of the day you’re still

our son. Just like we always do.”

Zorian stretched his mouth into a thin line and gave Father a narrowed stare, but said nothing.

Father simply stared back at him, as if daring him to say anything.

“Andir, honey, I thought we agreed I would be the one to talk,” Mother sighed.

Father raised both of his hands in a gesture of surrender. He also gave her an exasperated look, but

she had already turned back towards Zorian, ignoring him.

“What are you planning, Zorian?” Mother asked him bluntly.

“Nothing much,” Zorian said. “I’m going to move out of the house immediately after I graduate.

Maybe sooner. Open my own business, buy myself a house, things like that.”

“You think running a business is easy?” Father challenged. Well, that didn’t take long.

“I’m an amazing mage,” Zorian said immodestly. “Even if I had the worst business sense in the

world, I’d still be able to make enough for a living.”

“But the family business–” Mother began.

“Not for all the money in the world,” Zorian said, cutting her off.

A brief silence descended upon the scene as Mother and Father shared a long look between them.

“Oh!” Zorian said, suddenly remembering something. “I’ll also take care of Kirielle.”

This statement naturally caused both of them to give Zorian a look of surprise.

“What do you mean you’ll take care of Kirielle?” Mother asked slowly. “Why would she need

someone to take care of her?”

“Well, someone needs to teach her magic and nullify that stupid arranged marriage you prepared for

her,” Zorian said casually.

A look of intense, shocked outrage appeared on Mother’s face. For a moment she seemed unable to

process what she just heard, but then she outright exploded at him.

“You little brat!” she snapped at him agitatedly. “You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Weirdly, Father just laughed at the scene, shaking his head at nobody in particular. Zorian was

mystified by this reaction, but decided to ignore it for now.

“The situation seems simple enough to my eyes,” Zorian countered, unperturbed by her outrage.

“In regards to living your life, we can humor you, but you have no right, no right at all to tell me how

to raise my daughter!” Mother shouted angrily at him, stomping threateningly straight into his

personal space. “You are way out of line! Andir, you tell him!”

“What, me?” Father said with a look of exaggerated surprise. “I thought we agreed you would be the

one to talk to him?”

Mother gave him an angry, venomous look that promised later retribution, but didn’t press him

further.

“You have no idea what’s in Kirielle’s best interest, Zorian,” Mother told him warningly. “Don’t stick

your nose where it does not belong!”

“I’m afraid that, if I don’t get an actual explanation, I’m still going to go through with my idea,” Zorian

told her.

“You can’t take a child from her parents, even if you’re her brother,” Mother told him angrily. “We can

call the police!”

“But would you actually do so?” Zorian challenged. She shrank back a little. They both knew she

wouldn’t. “Besides, I bet that marriage is of questionable legality to begin with.”

“The marriage is… negotiable,” Mother said, pacing around the room in agitation. “You’re making a

mountain out of a molehill. It’s just an informal agreement, not a legally binding document. It’s not

like we’d force Kirielle to go through it at all costs. But magic is absolutely off the table! She can

never, under any circumstances be taught magic!”

“Why?” Zorian frowned.

“I’m trying to do her a favor!” Mother shouted, turning to face his again. “Don’t you know what her

roots are? What my mother was?”

Zorian gave her an uncomprehending look. Her mother? What did her mother have to do with

anything? He knew they didn’t get along well, but he never really heard anything too shocking about

her. Besides, she had been dead for a while now.

“Wait,” he said. “Are you talking about–”

“She was a witch!” Mother said, preempting his conclusion. “She was a witch and she was so

damned proud of that fact. She never let anyone forget it! Once, she even threatened she was going

to poison the town well when a bunch of customers tried to get out of paying her for the potions she

made them. You know, just like the witches of old were said to do when someone wronged them!”

Zorian winced.

“You have no idea what it’s like to be the daughter of a witch,” Mother continued. “A son is fine.

Witches didn’t care about male children. Everyone knows this. They firmly believed that magic was

transferred to the child through the womb, so only a daughter can continue the lineage.”

Zorian raised an eyebrow at her. Why would they–

“I don’t know why they believed what they did!” Mother said, as if reading his mind. “I never cared to

know. I just wished she would shut up about witches and let me live some semblance of a normal

life. But she never did, so everyone around me saw me as a soul-stealing, mind-ensnaring, poison-

wielding witch-in-waiting. And if Kirielle learns magic, she’ll suffer the same fate.”

“Mother…” Zorian sighed.

“I was really lucky to marry your father,” Mother said.

“Well, you were a pretty fine catch yourself,” Father said, grinning. He had been silent while Mother

ranted about her childhood frustrations, but apparently he now felt it was safe to throw in a comment

or two.

Mother ignored him, though. She was probably still angry about his earlier quip about her being the

designated speaker.

“My daughter won’t have to fear for her future and rely on luck to find a good husband. She won’t

have people cross to the other side of the road when they see her or spreading vile slander about

her completely unprovoked,” Mother continued. “Unlike my mother, I’ve done everything I can to

distance myself from our family legacy. So long as she takes my example and stays well away from

anything magic related, anyone that tries to start something will end up looking petty and paranoid.

But if she starts learning magic, then everything will be ruined!”

“You don’t know that,” Zorian pointed out.

“Why take the risk?” Mother challenged. “Maybe if she married early, to a wealthy and respected

husband… but you already said you are opposed to that, didn’t you? So where does that leave us?”

Zorian stared at her. This was the side of Mother that he had never really known before. Was this

why she was so obsessed with family reputation and social position?

He looked at Father, but the man was uncharacteristically skittish. He just looked away, refusing to

meet his eyes.

Though he didn’t actually say anything, Zorian understood the message: he was on his own here.

Kirielle was Mother’s project, and he wasn’t going to stick his nose in it unless he had to.

“What if Kirielle doesn’t want to go along with your plan?” Zorian asked slowly.

“She’s nine,” Mother said. “She doesn’t know what she wants.”

“She’s not always going to be nine, though,” Zorian pointed out.

“Yes, well, we can continue this conversation when she gets older,” she told him firmly. “You didn’t

start learning magic when you were nine, either.”

She had a point there. In all honesty, he wasn’t willing to push this matter further than this. He mostly

just raised the issue to gauge her reaction to it. He hadn’t expected this sort of response. On top of

that, while Kirielle said she wanted to learn magic, she was also rather impatient and flighty. Who

knew whether she was even capable of the discipline required to become a mage.

Besides, the most important thing was that the arranged marriage was apparently just an informal

thing and not something his parents would push for at all costs. He couldn’t claim with certainty that

it would be a good idea to teach Kirielle magic, but he knew for a fact that she hated the arranged

marriage thing.

“Right,” Zorian said finally. “I’m not informed enough to make a decision here, so I’ll withdraw for

now.”

“You’re damn right you’re going to withdraw!” she told him. She still sounded outraged but the anger

was visibly draining out of her now that he was no longer challenging her. “What the hell made you

think you have the right to give me parenting advice? Not even your father dares to tell me how to

raise my daughter and you, an immature brat that has never even been with a woman, think you can

tell me what to do. Why don’t you make a daughter of your own if you think–”

This was going to take quite a while, wasn’t it?

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Father staring at the scene and smiling faintly in schadenfreude.

Zorian sighed. Yes, this would definitely take a while.

- break -

“So, I discovered a new function of the orb,” Zach said.

Zorian stopped working on the metal, flower-shaped construct on his bench and gave Zach a curious

look.

“What do you mean you found a new function?” Zorian asked.

“I mean, one completely unrelated to its role as a mobile palace,” Zach said, waving the orb in front

of him. “Look. Take the orb and try this…”

It took a while for Zach to convey to Zorian what he had to do to activate this new function he

discovered. After all, the way Zorian interacted with the orb was completely different from the way

Zach did. Zach’s way was more instinctive, almost automatic, whereas Zorian had to take the

initiative and actively grope around for a way to interface with it.

Eventually, though, he succeeded. He connected with the orb in the new manner that Zach found

and immediately found himself connected to… something. Some kind of empty space, maybe?

“Weird,” Zorian eventually said.

“Yeah,” Zach said. “I have no idea what this does, though.”

“Neither do I,” said Zorian after some tinkering. He handed the orb back to Zach. “Keep tinkering

with it. You’ll probably have more luck with it than I would.”

Besides, Zach had far more free time to tinker with the orb than Zorian did. The restart was nearing

its end and there were so many things that needed to be done…

- break -

The restart was almost over. Overall, Zorian would have described it as a highly productive one.

The study of the gate stabilization frame they had stolen from the Ibasan base yielded a lot more

results than Zorian expected. He now knew that some very unconventional methods had been used

while making the gate – instead of carving the spell formula necessary for the operation of the frame,

the Ibasans had embedded them directly into the frame in the form of numerous magic threads. The

frame literally had to be peeled away, layer by layer, in order for researchers to record the layout of

the threads and attempt to decipher it. Sadly, though they had invited many capable researchers on

the project, they had failed to make sense of how the frame worked. Perhaps if the gate frame was

still actively maintaining a dimensional passage, but as it was? Not a chance…

Still, it was a start. A lot of important groundwork had been done, and future analysis of the gate

should go much faster. It was probably good that they didn’t manage to take an active gate in this

restart – if they did, they would no doubt shy away from simply taking it apart like they ended up

doing here, and several crucial insights would never have been made.

The interrogation of Sudomir was also a success. Granted, the man knew so many important things

that he and Alanic had already agreed to keep kidnapping him in future restarts as well, but even his

current gains were considerable. For instance, Zorian had finally found out what the deal was behind

his strange transformations.

While Sudomir was an extremely talented warder and soul mage, and dabbled in lots of other

magics as well, he was not terribly impressive as a fighter. Sudomir was well aware of this, and thus

decided to close that vulnerability by becoming a shifter.

But he was overconfident and reached far beyond his grasp. Rather than picking one specific

magical creature to fuse his soul with, he decided to splice up several magical creatures into some

kind of unholy abomination that theoretically combined the best features of all of them… and then

fused with that.

According to Alanic, it was incredible that the ritual didn’t end up turning him utterly insane or a

quivering mass of unstable flesh right from the get-go. As it was, the shifter ritual he designed was

only a partial failure – the transformation was almost uncontrollable, forcing him to keep it

suppressed at all times. But whenever he was under a lot of stress or in emotionally charged

situations, his control inevitably started to slip, warping his mind…

Still, while the shifter ritual was a failure in many ways, it did give him his signature resilience. One of

the creatures he used in crafting his initial abomination was a troll, and the other a dragon. The other

three were similarly hard to kill. Zorian shuddered to think what would happen if he were allowed to

completely transform into his composite form.

Another thing they found out from Sudomir was that there were some people related to the Cult of

the World Dragon that they had missed thus far when investigating the invaders. This was because

they technically weren’t cultists. In fact, they were purposely kept separated from known cultists as

much as possible, so they would look as clean as possible in case somebody investigated them.

This included a fair number of lawyers, low-level politicians and even a respected judge. There was

no time left to really check these people out, and Zorian suspected they weren’t too important for

understanding the invasion, but he made a mental note to investigate them anyway. Just for the

sake of being thorough.

Eventually the day of the summer festival came… and no attack occurred. The Ibasans continued

evacuating, the Cult of the World Dragon never made a move, and the primordial trapped in the Hole

was never released.

But the restart ended right on schedule anyway, and Zorian woke up in Cirin, with Kirielle wishing

him a good morning…

Chapter 073

Plodding Ahead

Deep in the jungles of Koth, there was a large, circular hole in the ground that led to a narrow

vertical shaft and a pool of greenish water at the bottom. Although the place was quite beautiful, very

few people could come here to admire it. It was, after all, absolutely teeming with chameleon drakes.

Naturally, this was the cenote where they had recovered the orb of the first emperors in the previous

restart. Zach and Zorian stood on the edge of the cenote, observing the chameleon drakes milling

around the place and discussing how to go about recovering the orb this time around. Occasionally a

group of chameleon drakes wandered past them or scrutinized their location, but between their

cloaking spells and Zorian’s ability to reach into their minds and edit their senses and memories,

there was little chance of them being discovered.

“So how are we doing this?” Zach asked. “Do you think you can sneak us in?”

Zorian stared at the cenote for a second before shaking his head. The drakes inside the cenote

tended to clump together in groups of five or more, and the orb cave seemed to be the place that

held the largest group.

“It’s hard enough to keep the drakes from noticing us when it’s just one or two,” Zorian said sadly.

“Those four independently moving eyes make their senses quite unlike humans. Figuring out how to

fool their senses from moment to moment is too tiresome for me to do it on large groups.”

Zach didn’t seem surprised by this. He seemed to be getting more familiar with the limitations of

Zorian’s mind magic. “Then we should just go in, spells blazing, then?” he offered. “I mean, why

complicate things? We can take them, I’m sure of it.”

“I’d rather not fight a swarm of chameleon drakes today,” Zorian said. “How about this? You move

back from the cenote a little and attack them. If their previous reaction is any indication, they should

all swarm out to deal with you. When they do, I will teleport into the orb cave, claim it, then teleport

out. Even if they leave behind a few guards, these will be no match for me.”

“And what if your attempts to claim the orb cause the hydra to appear?” Zach said with a frown. “I

don’t want to be mean, but your fighting skills…”

“I’m no match for that thing, I know,” Zorian said, nodding. “I don’t have to actually fight it, though. I

can always just flee if it appears. I’m good enough to survive its assault for the few seconds it takes

to cast the teleport spell. Besides, I suspect the hydra can’t actually exit the pocket dimension inside

the orb cave itself. It’s just too big. The last time it emerged from the lake at the bottom of the

cenote, and I suspect this time it will be no different.”

“But if you snatch the orb and leave the cave, won’t the hydra have plenty of space near you to

teleport itself in?” Zach asked.

Uhh… damn. He hadn’t thought of that.

“And even if the hydra doesn’t react immediately, simply having it inside makes the orb into a

massive time bomb. The monster can clearly exit the orb whenever it wishes. What if we bring the

orb to Cyoria and the hydra decides to enter the city while we’re sleeping or otherwise distracted?

Imagine the damage it could do. If it decides not to react when we claim the orb, it might be a good

idea to deliberately lure it out before we bring the orb to a populated area.”

They decided to try Zorian’s idea anyway. The execution turned out to be a little more complicated

than Zorian had thought it would be. Apparently Zach alone was not threatening enough to whip the

entire group of chameleon drakes into a frenzy and make them leave their lair. After all, he was just

one man. He might have been ungodly powerful, but that wasn’t something that could be gleaned at

first sight. Thus, the drakes initially simply sent a group of five young drakes to deal with him. Of

course, when Zach effortlessly slaughtered those five, the entire cenote grew more agitated… but

not agitated enough to rush out and swarm him. They felt pretty safe in their cenote base, so they

just massed themselves together and decided to wait and see if Zach would actually dare attack

them in their home. Inconveniently for Zorian, they picked the orb cave as their rallying point.

Thankfully, when Zach started to launch artillery spells at the cenote, they decided they couldn’t

afford to turtle up like that. They rushed out to try and stop him, leaving only a handful of guards

behind. Zorian quickly teleported in, claimed the orb and teleported out.

Mission accomplished. As for the hydra, it never showed up. Not when Zorian claimed the orb and

not when Zach and Zorian waited for several hours in the middle of the jungle to see if it would

eventually decide to emerge. Zorian didn’t know what to think about that. On one hand, this meant

they didn’t have to fight a giant, teleporting, godtouched hydra. On the other hand, it was just like

Zach said earlier – this meant that said hydra could pop out of the orb when they least expected it

and ruin the entire restart.

“We really need to figure out how to actually enter the damn orb,” Zach said unhappily, turning the

orb idly in his hands.

“We need to consider the possibility that the orb simply doesn’t have that kind of ability built into it,”

Zorian told him, staring at the orb in Zach’s hands in a speculative manner. “Teleportation magic is

tricky to make into magic items. There are recall rods that can teleport a person to a pre-determined

point and teleport platforms that can allow teleportation between fixed points, but anything more

sophisticated requires a living caster. It might be that the previous owners of the orb used some kind

of specialized spell to enter and leave the orb dimension.”

“Lovely,” Zach said, throwing the orb into the air and triggering its deployment mechanism. The orb

distorted and then collapsed inward with a soft whooshing sound. In a flash it was gone, no visible

trace of its presence anywhere. “That means either searching for an obscure teleportation spell or

creating one from scratch. That could take forever. As if we didn’t have enough time sinks already…”

He reclaimed the orb, causing it to pop back to existence again, and then deployed it again

immediately afterwards.

“If you are right, though, then this is really poor design,” Zach continued. “Why the hell would you not

include a way in when making something like this? It shouldn’t be that hard to place a teleport

platform, recall stone or something similar inside. Then, when the owner of the orb commands it to, it

pulls the person inside and deposits them there. That’s a viable method, no?”

He reclaimed and then deployed the orb again.

“It is,” Zorian agreed. “And maybe there really was such a place inside the orb, once. But teleport

platforms and recall stones don’t last all that long without regular maintenance. Not for centuries, at

least. And there is a chance that something inside actively broke the mechanism. Say, a giant

rampaging hydra…”

“I didn’t think of that,” Zach scowled, reclaiming the orb again. “We just don’t–”

When Zach deployed the orb the fourth time, there was a much louder whooshing sound than usual

and the two of them suddenly found themselves standing next to a gigantic, pissed-off hydra. It

immediately pounced on them with an unearthly roar.

Needless to say, the next few minutes were… somewhat hectic.

- break -

Defeating the hydra took longer than it had the last time they fought, but the fact they didn’t have to

worry about Daimen and his men dying actually made the battle easier. Things were a little hairy in

the beginning, when the hydra had caught them off-guard, but after that they just kept themselves

out of the hydra’s reach and kept hammering away at it until it decided the situation was hopeless

and fled into the jungle. That took hours to do, though, because Zach had already reclaimed the orb

by that point and the hydra really didn’t like that. It didn’t help that Zorian was interested in how its

multi-part mind worked and thus spent most of the battle studying it instead of fighting it for real.

They didn’t chase after it to finish it off. Having it out of the orb was enough for them. They did spend

a lot of time discussing what happened, though, and came to a conclusion that it was no accident

that the hydra had only emerged after Zach had deployed the orb. It was likely that the hydra

couldn’t exit the orb while it was in its portable form and had to wait for Zach to deploy the orb before

it could make the attempt. That, in turn, suggested that perhaps entering the orb without deploying it

was similarly impossible… which would make their previous method of studying the orb while

holding it in their hands a somewhat wrong-headed method of finding the entrance.

Regardless, after claiming the orb and chasing off the hydra that emerged from it, Zach and Zorian

returned to their current base in Koth – the small aranean base that the Silent Doorway Adepts had

established around the local Bakora gate.

Zorian’s previous suspicion that the Silent Doorway Adepts would get friendlier and more open to his

arguments if he brought them a functional gate address to Koth turned out to be true beyond his

wildest dreams. The aranea went absolutely crazy once they tried it out and confirmed it worked. It

took little more than four days for him to convince them that the time loop was real and that they

should work with him, which was less than half of what it was before. He still sent a simulacrum on a

slow journey to Koth, though, both because he didn’t want to put all his eggs in one basket and

because he needed it to establish a telepathic relay link to Koth by physically placing relay stones

along the way.

Still, he was extremely pleased that he managed to get this deal with the Silent Doorway Adepts

working. It wasn’t absolutely crucial for reaching Koth, but it would be absolutely necessary when

they decided to retrieve the piece of the key that was lost in Blantyrre. Blantyrre didn’t have any

notable human civilizations, meaning that ships traveling there were extremely rare. There was no

convenient archipelago to serve as a bridge between continents and allow island hopping, so

teleporting there was out of the question. The seas and coasts were wild and untamed, full of

dangerous monsters and natural danger zones. Zorian had spoken to Daimen about it, and the

conclusion was that it was theoretically possible for them to reach Blantyrre within the span of a

month… but only just. They would have to fully dedicate an entire restart for the task, and they would

be left with a measly handful of days to explore Blantyrre before the restart ended.

Thankfully, Blantyrre was seeded full of Bakora Gates. In fact, they were seeded much more densely

there, as if whatever power that had made the gates originated from that continent. This was curious

because, as far as anyone knew, humanity had never really lived there in the past. Scholars often

quarreled about what this meant, but Zorian didn’t really care about those arguments – all he cared

about was that the Bakora gate network was pretty much the only viable method he had of reaching

Blantyrre in a timely manner. The fact that one of the imperial artifacts was lost in Blantyrre was one

of the major worries he had about their chances to collect the entire Key. Now that he knew he could

potentially reach the continent in as little as four days if he acquired the correct gate address, it was

like a giant rock was lifted off his shoulders. Maybe they really had a chance of doing this…

“What about your brother?” Zach suddenly asked. “Didn’t you hand him a notebook full of

descriptions from our previous restart? Surely he left himself information about where the orb is.”

“He did, but I already told him we would be claiming it for ourselves,” Zorian said.

“Ha. He must have loved that,” Zach said, smiling at Zorian slightly.

“Yeah, he wasn’t happy about that,” Zorian nodded. “He wasn’t too bitter, though. He knows he can’t

handle the hydra without our help. He’d need more than a month just to find, vet and organize the

extra mercenaries he’d have to hire to successfully retrieve the orb. He did make me promise I

would let him have the orb once we were out of the time loop, though.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Zach shrugged. “I mean, I’ve really taken a liking to this thing, but he does sort of

have a legitimate claim on it, and he’s your brother to boot. You owe me, though.”

“I owe you?” Zorian said, raising his eyebrow at him. “Owe you what?”

“Another portable palace like this, of course,” said Zach, waving the orb in front of Zorian’s face.

“You’ll be trying to get crazy good at pocket dimensions soon, no? Surely, a measly little pocket

dimension like this is no big deal.”

‘Measly’, he says. Information about pocket dimension creation was scarce, but what Zorian had

found suggested that this orb was near the top end of what was possible to achieve. There were

examples of bigger hidden worlds, but not many.

“Correction,” Zorian said blandly. “We’ll be trying to get crazy good at pocket dimensions soon. Are

you seriously telling me you’ll pass by the opportunity to learn how to create one?”

“I’d never pass up the opportunity to learn something so useful,” Zach said with a grin. “But you’re

the one who’s good at creating things, while I am more the kind of guy that breaks them. Plus, we’ve

already established that you owe me. I’ve magnanimously decided to let your brother claim the orb

outside the time loop as a favor to you. As recompense, you need to make another portable palace

for me when we finally get out.”

“We’ll talk about that later, when we find out how feasible the idea actually is,” Zorian told him lightly.

“However, I can tell you right now that you’re never getting an actual palace.”

“Whaaat?” Zach whined. “Why not?”

“Because pocket dimensions don’t create matter,” Zorian told him. He pointed at the orb in Zach’s

hands. “If you want them to contain a piece of land like that one does, you basically have to ‘steal’ it

by enclosing an actual place into it during the creation process. So if you want a portable palace…

well, you first need to build the palace in question. Putting aside the actual costs of such a project,

which are bound to be astronomical, I just don’t have the necessary skills to design and build a

palace.”

“Oh,” Zach said. “Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.”

“Now, if you want a tastefully hollowed out rock or a nice wooden cottage… that I can definitely help

you with,” Zorian told him. “Hell, I might even be able to fit in some actual glass windows if you want

me to be extravagant!”

That triggered a lengthy argument about what kind of building would be possible for a single mage to

build on his own, using only natural materials. The argument eventually culminated into a building

competition where both Zach and Zorian did their best to construct the most luxurious residence they

could with the materials they had on hand.

If any jungle explorer were to stumble upon the site several hours later, they would probably be

baffled by the series of towers, ziggurats and blocky houses scattered throughout the entire region.

Alas, this part of the jungle was very remote and no such explorer would ever come before the

restart ended.

The bats and other animals that moved into the buildings after a few days definitely appreciated their

new accommodations, though.

- break -

Zach and Zorian floated in the black void. The black sky that surrounded them was omnidirectional

and featureless, containing only one point of interest – a roughly humanoid entity with softly glowing

eyes. The Guardian of the Threshold.

It had been a while since they visited this place. They tried not to interact with the Guardian too

much, lest they accidentally trigger some kind of safeguard and it realized there were two Controllers

inside the time loop and that it should do something about that. However, now that they’d gotten

their hands on a piece of the Key, it only made sense for them to come and visit the Sovereign Gate

to see how it would react.

“Welcome, Controller,” the Guardian said, its voice just as soft and devoid of emotion as Zorian

remembered it to be. The entity gave no indication it remembered their last visit to this place.

“We have questions for you,” Zach told the Guardian bluntly.

“I will do my best to answer them,” the Guardian agreed placidly.

They didn’t ask it about the orb immediately. Instead, they first confirmed the number of restarts they

had until the time loop collapsed, just in case. They had 42 left, exactly as it should be. After that

Zorian summoned a list of questions the two of them had prepared for the Guardian over the

previous restarts, concerning Red Robe, the mechanics of the time loop and so on.

They didn’t get anywhere with that, of course. The Guardian either didn’t know how to help them or

flat out refused to do so when they asked things they weren’t ‘authorized’ to know. They had

expected that, but it was still frustrating to be foiled so thoroughly. In any case, once they had

exhausted their prepared list of questions, they finally moved onto to the main purpose of this visit.

“Guardian, can you tell us more about the Key now?” Zorian asked.

“To find out about the Key, please bring me the Key for inspection,” the Guardian told him.

“Yes, yes… in order to find out about the Key, we must first have the Key. A perfectly logical

requirement,” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “But we’re not here for that. Our question is this: if we bring

you a single piece of the Key, does that count for something? Do we get to ask you questions about

it?”

“Having only one piece of the Key will result in information about that part only,” the Guardian noted.

“That’s fine,” Zach said dismissively. “We brought you one of the pieces, so why don’t you take a

look?”

“I do not see it,” the Guardian told him immediately. “Are you sure you have connected it to the

control room properly?”

“Wait, we have to do what?” Zach asked incredulously.

As it turned out, simply having the pieces of the Key on them when they connected to the Sovereign

Gate wasn’t enough. The Guardian neither knew nor cared what they had on their person when they

entered this void it inhabited. Instead, it was up to Zach and Zorian to connect the orb to the

Sovereign Gate so the Guardian could inspect it and confirm its authenticity.

How were they supposed to do that? The Guardian was naturally of no help whatsoever. It took

them two hours of frustrated tinkering before they realized they had to use their marker as a sort of

bridge, simultaneously connecting it to both the Sovereign Gate and the orb. Only then did the

Guardian recognize it.

“This is indeed a legitimate piece of the Key,” the Guardian decided.

“Finally,” Zach huffed. “So what does this get us?”

“Nothing on its own,” the Guardian responded. “You need the entire key to unlock higher

authorization than you have now. However, you can now ask me for information about it like you

wanted earlier. Keep in mind that I have no knowledge of the object’s mundane functions. I can only

give you information about it as it relates to the time loop.”

“So if we asked you about the pocket dimension contained in the orb…” began Zorian.

“I couldn’t help you,” the Guardian said. “I didn’t even know there was a pocket dimension

encapsulated within the Key piece until you told me.”

There was a second of silence as both Zach and Zorian frowned at the information. This was not

completely unexpected. It had been very obvious during their previous visit that the Guardian did not

perceive the world in the same way humans did and often just plain disregarded things not related to

its job. Still, this was disappointing to hear.

“Alright,” said Zach eventually. “So what can you tell us about the orb, then? What are its capabilities

as it relates to the time loop?”

“It contains a memory bank that the Controller can use to store and organize their important

memories across restarts,” the Guardian said.

Wait, what? Zach and Zorian shared a shocked glance, not having expected this at all.

“A memory bank…” Zorian repeated slowly.

“Yes,” the Guardian confirmed. “You should be able to sense an empty space inside if you focus on

the Key piece correctly. Simply focus on the memories you want to store in the bank and push them

inside. Once inside, they will persist from restart to restart and be available for viewing at any time,

unless you choose to delete them at some point. Keep in mind that this ability only exists inside the

time loop – once you leave and this reality permanently collapses, all of the memories you stored

inside the Key piece will be similarly destroyed. Make sure to refresh on anything important you

placed there before you leave.”

There was a brief silence as the two of them digested this information.

“I guess we now know what that mysterious empty space inside the orb was,” Zorian finally said.

“Yeah,” Zach said distractedly, lost in thought for a second. He then took a deep breath and turned

to Zorian again. “It sounds very convenient.”

“Yes,” Zorian agreed. The ability was a little redundant to him, what with his ability to create memory

packets, but he could imagine that an average Controller would find the ability absolutely invaluable.

It was almost like having a notebook that carried over from restart to restart, only better. “Guardian,

is there any limit on the amount of memories this bank can hold?”

“There are limits to everything,” the Guardian told him. “But you are highly unlikely to ever reach

these particular ones. Even if you found a way to store your entire memory and did so in every single

restart, you would not come even close to filling the available space inside the memory bank.”

Good to know. This gave him some very nice ideas… after all, if he could unload most of the

notebooks he had kept in his head into the orb, he could really go wild in recruiting experts and

having them continue their work across restarts.

“Do you think the other imperial artifacts have similar abilities?” Zorian asked Zach.

“Probably,” agreed Zach. “Hey, Guardian! What about the other pieces? Do they all give us an ability

related to the time loop?”

“To find out about the other pieces of the Key, please bring them to me for inspection,” the Guardian

answered.

Zorian snorted in amusement.

“Yeah, dumb question, I guess,” Zach said, clacking his tongue. “But I think they probably do all give

an ability. No reason for the orb to be the only one. Now I’m even more anxious to get my hands on

these things…”

“No wonder we haven’t been able to find a way to place temporary markers or remove people from

the time loop,” said Zorian after some thought. “No doubt those two abilities are also tied to imperial

artifacts. Probably the crown Quatach-Ichl is wearing and that dagger that is in Eldemar’s royal

treasury.”

Zach gave it some thought.

“You may be right,” he eventually said. “Which do you think gives what?”

“Well, purely thematically speaking, I’d guess that the knife is what removes people from the time

loop,” said Zorian. “Which would leave the crown as the artifact that allows for the placement of

temporary markers.”

“Hm. It does make sense if you think of the temporary markers as subordinate to the main one,”

Zach mused. “The main marker is the ruler, and the ruler needs a crown.”

The Guardian of the Threshold remained silent during this conversation, giving no indication it had

heard anything. Pity. Zorian had hoped it might react a bit and therefore indicate how close they

were hitting to the truth. He really wondered how that thing was made. It appeared to be a mindless

automaton, but some of its responses were sufficiently lifelike that he had trouble treating it as a

purely mindless thing.

“Guardian, will you remember that we’ve already brought you this piece the next time we visit or do

we need to bring all five pieces simultaneously to get higher authorization?” Zorian asked.

“You must bring the entire Key if you want higher authorization,” the Guardian said.

“Damn,” Zach swore.

“We suspected it would be like this,” Zorian sighed.

They spent another hour pestering the Guardian about the orb and the memory bank it contained.

They didn’t find out anything terribly important though, so they eventually disconnected themselves

from the Sovereign Gate.

Unlike the first time they had gone here, this time they’d made much more thorough, sophisticated

preparations. As such, they didn’t find their bodies ‘catastrophically damaged’ by the time they were

ready to leave. Quite the contrary, the researchers left them well enough alone with no mind magic

necessary. This was partially because they’d brought much more intimidating forgeries of their

credentials and partially because they were trailed by two massive ‘bodyguards’ that kept watch

while they were communicating with the Guardian. The bodyguards were, of course, just particularly

lifelike golems that Zorian had made for the occasion. They were actually pretty terrible as far as

golems went, but they looked human enough to fool casual inspection and that was the only thing

that mattered. Their only job was to follow them around in utter silence, looking all grim and

intimidating.

They didn’t immediately leave the time magic research facility. They had come here not just to have

a chat with the Guardian of the Threshold, but also because they wanted to make use of the Black

Room for the restart.

However, they had made a mistake this time – they decided to bring the orb of the first emperor with

them into the Black Room.

It was a tempting idea. If they could bring a portable palace with them into the temporal acceleration

area, then it didn’t matter much that space was so limited – they could bring everything they needed,

even people, inside the orb. The main limitation of the Black Room would be broken. Sure, they still

didn’t know how to actually enter the pocket dimension contained in the orb, but neither of them

thought the procedure would forever elude them. And besides, they didn’t need to be able to enter

the orb to test the viability of the idea. All they had to do was bring the orb with them into the Black

Room and see what would happen.

Well, what happened was that the Black Room shut itself down almost instantly after initiating

temporal acceleration.

After an hour of analysis and heated discussion with nervous researchers, Zach and Zorian found

out that the price of temporally accelerating an area of space was based on the volume of space

being accelerated. By bringing a palace worth of space inside, even inside a pocket dimension, the

two of them massively inflated the mana cost of the operation procedure. Not to mention that the

facility itself was not designed to handle that kind of strain. As such, the Black Room ran out of mana

in less than a second and immediately shut itself down. The researchers, though still somewhat

intimidated by them, gave them a severe tongue-lashing for even trying the idea without consulting

them about it beforehand.

Oh, and they were really interested in studying the orb. Zorian actually considered letting them do

so, just to see what a group of dedicated researchers like this could tell them about the artifact, but

refused their request for the moment. He had to set things up very carefully before giving them the

orb, or else he would simply be handing it to the Eldemarian authorities and starting a manhunt for

the two of them.

“I wonder if this is true for the time loop as well,” Zach mused later, when they were out of the facility.

“If we create our own pocket dimensions here, aren’t we also increasing the volume that needs to be

temporally accelerated and thus creating a strain on the system?”

“Probably,” Zorian said. “But the time loop reality is so huge that even if we increased its internal

volume a bit by opening additional pocket dimensions, the added power drain should be pretty

miniscule. The problem with the Black Room is that it’s pretty tiny. The space inside the orb is

actually many times larger than the Black Room itself. As such, bringing the orb into the Black Room

is like trying to transport an elephant inside a tiny, one-man boat. No matter what clever method you

use to make it fit, it still weighs so much it would sink the whole setup. I fear this idea is dead in the

water.”

“Shame,” said Zach. “The orb does a pretty good job of isolating the space inside from the rest of

reality, though. That’s kind of what the Black Room is meant to accomplish, only better. What if,

instead of trying to bring the orb inside the Black Room, we simply ditched the Black Room

altogether and retooled the entire facility to apply its temporal acceleration effect on the orb itself? I

know the space inside the orb is much more massive than the Black Room, but maybe the effects of

a better dimensional boundary overshadow that? And really, even if it produces less drastic

acceleration, I’d rather spend half a month inside a palace than a full month inside a tiny cramped

room…”

“An interesting idea,” Zorian admitted. “We’d need to get willing cooperation from the staff of the

facility to pull something of that scale, though. No way could we pull this off ourselves, especially not

on a super-secret research facility financed by the Eldemarian government.”

Zorian still made a mental note to revisit the idea later. Perhaps it wasn’t very feasible at the

moment, but they needed every advantage they could get.

- break -

On one unremarkable Sunday morning, Zorian woke up to find Imaya’s house under siege.

Well, not a literal siege, but the throng of people gathered around the entrance was impressively

large and thoroughly blocked anyone’s ability to get in or out of the house. Zorian was quite mystified

by this, since he couldn’t think of anything he had done that would cause such an occurrence.

Zorian joined the other inhabitants of the house, who had awoken far sooner than him, in staring

warily through the window at the mass of people surrounding the house. They seemed to be quite a

diverse bunch, ranging from simple curious neighbors that had gathered to see what was happening

to groups of healers, mages, various guild recruiters and newspaper reporters.

“Dare I ask what this is about?” Zorian asked Imaya, who was nervously wringing her hands as she

eyed the gathered crowd with a wary eye.

“It’s my fault,” Kael spoke up in an embarrassed voice. “I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean it’s your fault?” Zorian asked curiously. “What did you do exactly?”

“Well, you know how I keep working on better medicines? And how I’ve been recruiting other

alchemists and healers in my work? Well, the results of that effort are getting… kind of impressive.

Impressive enough to cause a stir. Especially when they come from someone as young as me with

no real backer,” Kael explained. He shuffled in place uncomfortably and Kana squeezed herself

closer to him, disturbed by the fearful, awkward atmosphere in the room. “I’m really sorry. I hadn’t

considered this possibility at all.”

Zorian shook his head, not really angry at the boy. Part of the blame rested on him too – he should

have paid closer attention to what Kael was doing and what kind of attention it was garnering.

Though in all honesty, this was just a mild inconvenience for him. He could teleport in and out of the

house at will.

“They were initially much more aggressive about trying to get in,” Imaya told him. “But those wards

you placed on the house stopped them cold so they’ve been more restrained since then. The wards

themselves drew some people here, though. I’m not sure, but I think some people from the Mage

Guild are here to talk to you about that…”

It was only then that Zorian remembered that raising heavy wards around a residence required a

special permit from the city’s mage guild. A permit that Zorian didn’t have. He had been warding

places so often these days, with zero regard for local laws and customs, that he had almost

forgotten that this sort of thing was regulated in most places.

Okay, maybe this was more than just a mild inconvenience…

- break -

In the mountains of southern Altazia, there was a fairly famous cave system that surrounded an

ancient volcano. The volcano hadn’t been active in over a century, but the caves still held spacious

caverns and winding corridors full of lava that never cooled. This was a magically powerful place

heavily aligned with fire, and it was absolutely teeming with fire elementals.

And one of those elementals was Kilnfather, the elder fire elemental that Zach and Zorian were

currently visiting.

Kilnfather wasn’t the oldest of the elder elementals living in this place, but he was the only one even

remotely interested in talking with humans. The others lived deep in the lava fields of the volcano

cavern system – simply reaching their strongholds would be a monumental task, considering the

incredible heat and the omnipresent poisonous fumes of their home environment, and convincing a

taciturn elemental to talk with you was a notoriously futile endeavor. So Kilnfather it was.

They met Kilnfather in a wide, spacious cavern of black basalt stone. Steam and poisonous fumes

billowed up from the cracks in the floor and walls, but the air was entirely breathable with the aid of

the right air filtering spells. As for the temperature, well… it was hot, but not unhealthily so. They

could endure it for the few hours the talks would last.

The only thing Zach and Zorian really had to watch for was not to hurt any of the Kilnfather’s

‘children’…

Kilnfather looked like a giant gecko made out of cooling lava. He was black, with cracked skin that

pulsed with inner fire, dimming and brightening in a regular rhythm. His eyes were big, yellow, slitted

and shining. Surrounding him was a small throng of smaller black geckos that looked like tiny copies

of him. If one looked at the smaller geckos closely enough, however, they would notice they were

not elementals like Kilnfather. They were actual living beings.

The black geckoes had been, as far as anyone could tell, just regular animals until Kilnfather had

implanted some of his elemental spirit into them, causing them to swell in size and develop powerful

fire-based magic. Kilnfather loved his creations with all his heart, to the point where he styled his

entire appearance after them, and some people speculated he was trying to shape them into a

legitimate sapient species as time went by. He did not tolerate any violence towards his ‘beloved

children’ and would immediately start hostilities with anyone who hurt so much as a scale on their

back… and call the rest of the domain’s fire elementals for help if he thought he was outmatched.

The trouble was, sometimes these children started hostilities, forcing people to defend themselves…

but the Kilnfather didn’t care. No matter the circumstances, his children were always in the right.

“Welcome, guests,” Kilnfather said, his voice deep and resonant. “Come closer, come closer. Mind

my children, please. They can sometimes get a little… overzealous in their welcome, but they

always mean well.”

“Kilnfather is as welcoming as stories say,” Zorian said politely. “Hopefully these two guests will be

found worthy of your hospitality. Please accept our gifts.”

They directed the floating field of force that carried a small basalt chest towards Kilnfather, forcing it

to stop at a respectful distance from the elemental. It opened on its own, revealing a plethora of rare

stones and materials that were said to be attractive to fire elementals.

“Oh my, you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have,” Kilnfather said, his large, bright yellow tongue

darting out his mouth to lick his eyes one by one. “But it would be impolite of me to refuse a gift.

What was it that you said you came here for?”

“Well…” began Zorian. “We were wondering if you ever heard of any of the locations where the

primordials were imprisoned…”

- break -

House Letova was a fairly important House in Falkrinea. They were a new House, having achieved

their status due to their knowledge of certain unique potions that nobody else could figure out how to

make, but their future looked rather promising. Their potion business was booming, giving them

plenty of money to throw around to make themselves heard and boost their political influence in

Falkrinea and elsewhere.

Naturally, they guarded the secrets of their alchemy very, very closely. They invested a great deal of

their newfound wealth into security, well aware that if their competitors managed to get their hands

on their secrets their ascent to greatness would be greatly jeopardized.

Today, Zach and Zorian were trying to break into House Letova’s alchemy repository. They weren’t

doing it because they honestly wanted to steal their alchemical secrets, though Zorian would take a

look at their records if they succeeded, simply to satisfy his curiosity. No, they were doing it because

they wanted to practice their ability to break into secure areas.

The problem was simple. They needed to get the imperial dagger that was stored in the Eldemarian

royal palace. However, the palace was way out of their league at the moment. They just didn’t have

enough experience in breaking into places like that. Thus, Zorian had hit upon the idea of targeting

‘minor’ Houses, gradually tackling greater and greater challenges until they gathered enough

expertise in infiltration to tackle their real goal.

They had already tried their hand at breaking into some wealthy estates, sometimes successfully

and sometimes not. House Letova would be their biggest challenge yet.

“You know,” Zach had told him before they launched the mission, “I am amused by the fact that you

have qualms about stealing people’s secrets by rooting through their minds, but have no problems at

all about physically rooting through their stuff.”

“It’s not the same,” Zorian protested.

“I know,” Zach said. “And don’t get me wrong, it actually sets me at ease that you have some

standards about your mind magic usage. I can’t help but find it a bit amusing, though.”

“You don’t seem to have any problems going along with this,” Zorian remarked.

“Nah, I’ve done things like this all the time when I was alone,” Zach said dismissively. “Only with less

sneaking in and more blasting the door off its hinges and powering through the wards. One of these

days we’ll have to do these raids my way. It’s a rush. I bet you’d love it.”

Zorian snorted. “I bet I wouldn’t,” he countered. “Though maybe you’re on to something. Somehow I

feel less conflicted about taking people’s notebooks, research documentation and the like than I do

about taking their thoughts and memories. Mind magic is… something I can do on a whim. It’s easy,

it’s convenient and I don’t think I’m a good enough person to resist the temptation to use it all the

time if I get into the habit of using it lightly. But this kind of thing… it’s terrifying and stressful and

takes effort to organize and pull off. I’ll probably never feel casual about it.”

“Hmm,” hummed Zach. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Almost anything gets pretty mundane if you do it long

enough. But it is true that raids like this aren’t something you do on impulse alone. Anyway, we

came here to steal alchemical recipes, not to talk philosophy. Are we doing this or not?”

“We’re doing it,” responded Zorian. “Let’s go.”

- break -

Nine restarts had passed since the restart in which Zach and Zorian had found where the orb of the

first emperor was located. The two of them had worked on their skills, sought out experts and raided

places for practice and critical secrets. They expanded their research initiatives massively, making

use of the orb’s memory bank to store all the research notes that resulted from this, and then found

new sources of money and materials to pay for all this. Sudomir was completely interrogated several

times and his knowledge of the invasion and soul magic made full use of. They worked with Daimen

to get in touch with his friends and colleagues, narrowing down the location for the piece of the Key

that was lost in the Xlotic desert. They worked hard to understand and reverse-engineer the Ibasan

gate and tried to figure out a faster, easier way to activate the Bakora Gates.

They managed to enter the orb near the end of this period. They had been forced to design a

specialized teleportation spell to do so, which took multiple restarts due to the rarity of pocket

dimension magic and the corresponding difficulty of finding the right experts and manuals. When

they had finally managed to get in, they found that the pocket dimension did contain a teleport

platform that served as an in-built entrance… but the platform had broken down a long time ago due

to lack of maintenance. Once the platform was fixed, the spell was no longer necessary… but since

they were in the time loop, this repair was undone at the end of every restart. Zach and Zorian

eventually stopped bothering to repair the platform and just used the spell to enter and leave as they

wish. The spell was the superior option anyway, since it allowed them to enter and leave the orb in

any location they wished.

As for the contents of the orb… well, they hadn’t found any more giant hydras inside, much to Zach’s

disappointment. They had found a lot of dangerous plants and animals, though, so it was hardly

peaceful. They also found a great deal of potions, magical equipment, secret grimoires and valuable

materials… virtually all of which had expired, rotted, broken down or were hopelessly outdated. They

had high hopes that there was something good buried in all that trash and rubble, and were still

stubbornly combing through it.

Mercifully, the general decay of the place also extended to palace defenses. It was clear the palace

had once sported impressive wards and a frankly ridiculous number of traps (giant boulders rolling

down the corridors… seriously?), but most of them had broken down over the centuries.

Currently, Zorian was sitting on the grass in the middle of an isolated meadow. Not far from him was

a simulacrum absorbed in assembling a magical rifle, tirelessly pondering design improvements and

occasionally testing out prototypes on a distant rock. Zorian didn’t want to disturb him, but made a

mental note to himself to add better sound dampening wards on the final design – those magical

rifles he had been building were painfully loud. Though considering how large some of the latest

designs were getting, that was to be expected. He had told the simulacrum to design a better rifle,

not a portable cannon, dammit!

In any case, Zorian himself was controlling a group of golems against a group consisting of Zach,

Alanic, Xvim and Taiven. His four opponents were holding back a lot, or else the golems wouldn’t

last very long, but that was okay. This wasn’t a test of his golem making skills – it was a combat

exercise meant to test different tactics and figure out the most effective method of controlling and

deploying his golems.

He took advantage of a short pause in the battle to quickly check up on his simulacrum in Koth.

These days he no longer needed a long chain of telepathic relays to do so – the soul magic

knowledge he got from Sudomir had allowed him to devise a method of establishing telepathic

contact with his simulacrums through the soul they all shared. He found out that the simulacrum was

busy arranging some kind of trade deal along with Daimen and left him to his devices.

Eventually the combat exercise ended and the other four joined Zorian in relaxing on the grass.

Well, they were relaxing until the simulacrum fired its prototype cannon again and startled them all

with another devastating boom.

“Gods, Zorian,” Taiven complained. “That thing your copy is building is like a miniature siege engine

and you’re still not satisfied? What on earth do you need a gun like that for?”

Zorian smiled at her.

“We’re going to kill a giant spider,” he told her. “And then we’re going to visit an annoying old woman

with its remains…”

Chapter 074

The Return

Simulacrum number four was worried. He really shouldn’t be, considering what he was and how

many times the original had fought the grey hunter by now. If anything, he should be feeling excited

– he had a good feeling about this attempt. Their skills had grown, they had become intimately

familiar with the grey hunter’s capabilities and they had brought a number of surprises designed

specifically to counter it. This could work. This could actually work, unlike so many previous attempts

they’d made.

Maybe that was it. In their previous attempts, Zorian – and, by extension, simulacrum number four –

had always felt the attempt was a long shot. Even if they failed, it was to be expected. This time he

actually felt good about their chances, making him more emotionally invested in the outcome.

Then again, they actually had a pressing need for the grey hunter’s eggs this time. They could

contact Silverlake without them, but talking to Silverlake was going to be much harder and much

more annoying if they couldn’t bring her something she desperately wanted.

He unconsciously clutched the rifle closer to his chest, the sensation of it dispelling his current

stream of thought. He remembered practicing with it over and over, but it still felt a bit alien to his

mind… and so did the arms that held it. He was a brand new type of simulacrum that the original had

thought up recently – instead of being embodied into an ectoplasmic shell like a regular simulacrum,

he had been attached to a real matter golem body designed to mimic the original. This was a step up

from the base spell in just about every regard, granting him vastly increased durability and halving

his maintenance cost at the same time. It allowed Zorian to maintain twice the usual number of

simulacrums and ensured that they wouldn’t be destroyed by relatively minor damage. The only

downside was that making the golem bodies was very time consuming, and that the materials were

expensive as hell. Or at least that was the idea, anyway. The simulacrum actually felt significantly

stiffer and more restricted in his movements than he was used to, a clear sign that his joints weren’t

working quite as well as the original had hoped they would. No doubt the original would find a way to

fix or mitigate these issues as time went by, but that would make no difference for him personally.

He really hoped he wouldn’t lock up or miss in the actual battle because of this.

Alas, the time for contemplation was over. A short message rippled out of his soul and into his

consciousness, informing him (and the other three simulacrums gathered around the area) that the

original was about to start the fight. He quickly checked up on his rifle one final time and then sent a

confirmation that he was ready through the exact same method, using their shared soul as a conduit

for communication. Very convenient, that. The original was already working on further upgrades,

based on their studies of the hydra and the cephalic rat collective, but that was still in the initial

stages and nowhere near ready for field use. For now, ‘normal’ soul conduit communication would

have to suffice.

And then it began. The grey hunter leapt out of its cave and immediately moved to attack Zach and

Zorian, completely ignoring the simulacrums scattered around the area. A swarm of projectiles

answered its charge, Zach and Zorian doing their best to keep it pressured without wasting too much

of their mana reserves. Zach launched powerful beams of force at it, forcing it to keep dodging and

breaking up its momentum. Zorian, on the other hand, borrowed Kirma’s trick – holding a greyish

metal cube as a spell focus, he launched swarms of smaller, cheaper projectiles that homed in

unerringly on the grey hunter’s weak points. He timed his attack to coincide with Zach’s, forcing the

grey hunter to take at least a few hits from every barrage. Although individually weak and unable to

truly threaten the grey hunter, they were apparently doing something because the spider was clearly

getting angrier and more agitated as seconds ticked by.

Simulacrum number four trailed the grey hunter with the scope of his rifle, but did not shoot. The

grey hunter was currently ignoring the simulacrums because it did not perceive them as a threat, but

that wouldn’t last very long if they started blindly firing into the battle zone. No, if he and his duplicate

brethren wanted to help Zach and the original, they needed to pick their moment carefully.

The problem with using the gun on the grey hunter wasn’t in whether or not it could dodge the bullet.

It couldn’t. To Zorian’s knowledge, nothing was fast enough to dodge a projectile that moved faster

than sound itself. The problem was that the spider never sat still long enough to get a good shot on

it. Bullets didn’t track their target and using magic to make them do so was incredibly difficult. The

most Zorian could do was curve their trajectories slightly towards where he wanted them to hit. And

the simulacrums didn’t just have to hit the grey hunter – they had to hit it in a way that left the egg

sack unharmed.

Basically, they needed the grey hunter to stay still for a second. A tall order, but the simulacrum was

confident that Zach and the original could pull it off.

The grey hunter lunged towards Zorian. Zach was a bigger threat, but Zorian was more annoying

and probably looked more vulnerable to its senses. If it could get rid of the annoying weakling first, it

could then focus its full attention on the true threat and its victory would be assured. But looks could

be deceptive. The grey hunter smashed straight into Zorian’s shield at full force and was stopped

cold. The thick barrier of force that surrounded Zorian was a marvel of spell engineering, a custom

spell that Zorian had designed with the help of a dozen professional spell crafters to make maximum

use of Zorian’s exceptional shaping skills. The softly glowing threads, woven through every inch of

the thick sphere of force, lit up like blazing lamps, distributing the incoming force away from the

impact points and into the shield as a whole, lessening the strain on any individual point in the

shield.

The grey hunter attacked the shield again and again in quick succession, and it finally gave way…

but rather than the whole shield shattering, three small hexagons of force broke down instead,

leaving the main structure unharmed. Before the grey hunter could take advantage of that the entire

shield shifted and automatically rearranged itself, nearby hexagons sliding into place to close the

gap.

Suddenly aware that Zorian was no easy target to be brought down quickly, the grey hunter tried to

back off, but it was too late. Zach had positioned himself carefully while the grey hunter had been

trying to batter down Zorian’s shield, and now launched a barrage of three hyper-dense stone

spheres at the spider. The grey hunter spun around like an acrobat, deflecting the spheres away

from itself with measured kicks, but Zorian took advantage of its predicament to launch a pair of

metal cylinders at it. The grey hunter, accustomed to weathering Zorian’s annoying but weak attacks

and not seeing any great concentration of mana in the cylinders, chose to ignore them in favor of the

much more threatening stone spheres.

Just before they were going to impact the grey hunter, the cylinders detonated into a cacophony of

sound, bright light, magical disturbances and aromatic smoke – all of it specifically optimized for grey

hunter senses.

Dazed and disoriented by the flashbang grenades, the grey hunter stumbled and stopped. Just for a

moment.

Simulacrum number four pulled the trigger.

Another deafening blast sounded out, closely followed by two more. Simulacrum number two didn’t

fire, as he was positioned very inconveniently and there was a danger he could hit the egg sack if he

fired. Of the three bullets, one missed the grey hunter completely – simulacrum number one had

apparently aimed his shot so poorly that not even the trajectory correcting magics the original placed

on the bullet could help. It didn’t matter, though – both he and number three had hit the grey hunter

straight into its cephalothorax, the bullets successfully breaking through its carapace.

It was a testament to the grey hunter’s toughness that, mere moments following this, it shook off the

stun effect and retreated at top speed, as if it hadn’t just been shot twice in the head with high-

caliber armor-piercing bullets. But it didn’t matter. It was living on borrowed time – from the moment

those bullets sank into its flesh, its fate was sealed. The bullets were filled with the distilled essence

of the crystal ooze – a magical creature every bit as powerful as the grey hunter, whose touch turned

all flesh into inert crystal. The crystallization bullets, as Zorian called them, were already turning the

grey hunter’s organs into lifeless crystal, and there was nothing the spider could do about it.

The grey hunter seemed to realize it too. It went berserk, lunging at Zach and Zorian with even

greater zeal, and then tried to flee. They couldn’t allow that, of course. If it escaped, it would

doubtlessly retreat into the deep dungeon and hide before dying, and other denizens of the dungeon

might eat the egg sack before they could track down its corpse. Thus, walls of stone and force

sprang up to bar its path, ectoplasmic threads and tentacles sought to entangle it and dimensional

gates barred the path to its lair.

Eventually, the internal crystallization process advanced too far for the grey hunter to keep

functioning and it started to visibly slow and then stop. Simulacrum number four and his fellow

duplicates were then sent in to hack it apart and claim the egg sack, because the original was too

much of a coward to do it himself. Then again, the grey hunter did mangle one of the simulacrums

beyond repair as its last act before dying, so maybe he shouldn’t judge.

But anyway… the grey hunter was dead… and the egg sack was still intact.

It was time to visit Silverlake again. After some thought, simulacrum number four wandered off from

the grey hunter’s corpse and sought out the original to talk to him about visiting the old witch. He

was so looking forward to seeing her reaction when she realized what they had done, and it wasn’t

fair that he wouldn’t get to see it just because he was a simulacrum! He was the one that shot the

grey hunter! Well, he and number three, but number three ended up being killed by the grey hunter’s

last hurrah.

He totally earned this and was not taking no for an answer.

- break -

After securing the corpse of the grey hunter, Zorian and his simulacrums went about carefully

removing the egg sack attached to its underbelly without damaging it – a task far harder than Zorian

would initially have assumed it would be. Then again, the egg sack had stayed attached to the grey

hunter while it was doing all sorts of sharp movements and acrobatics, so it was a bit silly of him to

assume he could just peel it off the spider as he wished. Still, it was nothing that Zorian and his

duplicates couldn’t solve with a bit of time and analysis. After an hour or so, they finally managed to

separate the egg sack from the corpse without ruining it.

They immediately set off to see Silverlake. They had no idea what it took to keep the eggs alive in

the long term, after all, so it was better to deliver them to Silverlake as soon as possible. They also

kept the grey hunter’s corpse, stashing it in the orb of the first emperor. Much of its value was ruined

when its insides crystallized, but there should still be enough of it for a potion or two.

After some reasoned and totally calm discussion, Zorian also decided to take simulacrum number

four with him to see Silverlake. Being accompanied by a simulacrum might help him convince her

that he wasn’t just a precocious teenage mage and that she should actually take him seriously.

In any case, tracking down Silverlake’s home wasn’t hard this time around. She may have hidden it

in a pocket dimension, but Zorian knew the general area it was in and had specialized divinations

that could find such things. They didn’t try to break into the pocket dimension, though. That would

have been threatening and rude. Instead, they got her attention in a more civilized manner – by

taking the grey hunter’s corpse out of the orb and parading it around the pocket dimension entrance

while chanting her name.

It didn’t take long before she decided to come out to meet them. She gave the dead grey hunter a

quick, intrigued look before seemingly ignoring it in favor of focusing on them instead. She remained

standing next to the entrance to her pocket dimension, though, a long iron rod clutched tightly in her

bony fingers.

“Hello,” Zach said, giving her a sunny smile and a casual wave of his hand.

“What a curious bunch of visitors you are,” Silverlake said, unmoved by his friendliness. “It’s not

every day that two baby mages manage to track me down to this place… and is that a simulacrum

attached to a golem frame? My, aren’t you a clever sort.”

“Well, you’re a pretty clever sort yourself,” Zorian noted. “You figured out what my simulacrum is

without casting any obvious analysis spells.”

He really meant that, too. Certainly he couldn’t pull off something like that. He’d have to spend

several minutes casting analytical divinations before he could work out what he was dealing with.

Granted, she may have done that before she stepped out of her pocket dimension, but it was still

impressive.

“Well? Out with it,” Silverlake demanded. “Why are you bothering this old woman in the middle of her

afternoon nap, making all this racket?”

“We have come to trade!” Zach said in an equally cheery tone, undaunted by her wariness.

“We have killed the grey hunter and retrieved its eggs fully intact,” Zorian said without preamble,

waving his hand at the corpse of the giant spider on the ground next to them. His simulacrum,

meanwhile, casually extracted the grey hunter’s eggs from the box he was carrying, letting Silverlake

see them. Her eyes immediately lit up with greed and excitement. She hid it quite quickly, but it was

there. “We thought you might be interested in them.”

“Oh? And why did you think that?” Silverlake asked him, inclining her head to the side, like a bird

that spotted something interesting.

“Because you told me so in the past,” Zorian said blandly.

“Because I told you so in the past,” Silverlake repeated slowly, looking at him like he was stupid.

“What a curious thing to say. Old I may be, but my memory is still going strong… and I don’t

remember ever talking to you.”

Zach and Zorian had discussed extensively what to tell Silverlake before coming to this place.

Telling her the truth about the time loop was dangerous, because she was likely proficient in both

soul and mind magic. She was a highly capable witch, after all, and they were famous for dabbling in

both of those fields. However, convincing her to help them through lies and manipulations would

take a long time… and time was, amusingly enough, something they had a chronic shortage of.

Thus, they had unanimously decided to just tell the annoying old witch the truth and see how she

reacted. Even if she was hostile, they could probably handle it.

Probably.

“You don’t remember because the world we live in is constantly repeating itself. On the night of the

summer festival, the world ends. Everything reverts to how it was the month before, and then carries

on as if nothing was wrong. Like an endlessly repeating music box, you repeat your actions over and

over in month-long intervals… constantly forgetting, constantly starting over,” Zorian explained,

being deliberately a little melodramatic and mysterious.

Silverlake listened to his explanation with an arched eyebrow, looking surprised and amused in

equal measure.

“My word, you came all this way just to deliver this kind of tall tale to me?” Silverlake said, chuckling

lightly. “I suppose I can understand where you’re coming from. I have been told, on occasion, that I

am rather repetitive in my arguments.”

“It’s not just you,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Everyone is reliving this month over and over. Only

me and Zach here are immune.”

“Oh, but of course!” Silverlake said, slapping herself in the forehead. “Of course it’s like that! No

doubt I too can get this kind of immunity at very favorable prices, thus saving myself from this awful,

awful fate of… repeating myself for all eternity? I must say, the scammers these days are getting

really inventive.”

“Actually, there is nothing we can do to help you retain awareness of previous restarts,” Zach said,

clacking his tongue unhappily. “Kind of depressing, but there you go. We’re not here for that. As I

have noted earlier, we’re here to trade – the grey hunter’s eggs in exchange for magical help.”

Silverlake stayed silent for a second.

“Ah, I see,” she finally said. “This is just you answering my question. I asked how you knew I needed

the grey hunter’s eggs and you gave me an answer. I supposed if I asked you for an actual

explanation…?”

“This is an actual explanation,” Zorian said. “It’s not my fault you don’t believe me.”

“Hmph,” Silverlake scoffed. “Out of curiosity, during this conversation that I have no memory of, did I

ever actually tell you what I needed the grey hunter’s eggs for?”

“No, you did not,” Zorian admitted. “To be honest, I was rather angry with you back then and didn’t

inquire too deeply. I came to you for help with a pressing problem and you sent me on all sorts of

tasks, all of which I did without complaint. But my only reward was to be told to go after the grey

hunter for its eggs. I was a lot weaker back then, so that basically amounted to sending me on an

impossible task in order to get rid of me.”

“That does sound like something I would do,” Silverlake nodded sagely. “Which brings me to my next

point – why are you so certain that I actually desire these eggs? Maybe I just sent you on a fool’s

errand to waste your time, and didn’t actually care about the outcome.”

Well, the truth was that Zorian didn’t know this for certain. He was making an educated guess, based

on things like her clearly having tried to acquire the eggs herself in the past. But she didn’t have to

know that.

“I’m an empath,” he told her. “So I am certain you do want these eggs very, very much.”

Silverlake scowled at him.

“A mind mage,” she spat out in disgust. “I have the most rotten luck, I swear. I only like mind magic

when I’m the one using it on others! Fine, fine, I admit it, I do want the grey hunter’s eggs… but

they’re not as valuable as you might hope!”

“Meaning?” Zorian asked calmly.

“I have an important project that requires them, but it’s only one of the two critical components that I

lack. If you had brought both of them, I would really be desperate to make a deal with you. But it’s a

shame, a shame, for without the other critical component, the eggs are merely… interesting.”

Zach rolled his eyes at her.

“You’re just like Zorian described you,” he said. “Every time one of your tasks is accomplished, you

come up with another one.”

“Well that’s not very fair,” she said reasonably. “I don’t remember ever giving you a task, after all. But

that aside, I never said I will not trade for the eggs. I just said you better not hope to swindle

something actually good from me in exchange for something that minor.”

‘Minor’, she says. Right.

“Out of curiosity, what is this other critical component?” Zorian asked.

“Bones and certain organs of a giant brown salamander that has grown past a certain size,”

Silverlake said.

“That’s it?” Zach asked incredulously. “Those things are everywhere around here!”

“It’s not as simple as it sounds,” Silverlake said. “Yes, there are plenty of them to be found in the

rivers and creeks around us, but they simply aren’t big enough… not mature enough. Giant brown

salamanders never die of old age, you see. They simply get bigger. But they are a fairly weak type of

magical creature, and they grow really slowly past a certain point, so almost none of them reach the

size I need them to be. I need a salamander that has survived for at least one hundred years, and

that’s incredibly rare.”

“They can’t be bred in captivity?” Zach asked.

Silverlake looked at him like he just asked the dumbest thing ever.

“Who would be willing to wait a hundred years for a creature to grow up?” she asked. “Nobody has

that much time, boy. Besides, they’d probably all get sick and die before the hundred years are up. I

have no idea how to go about raising giant salamanders.”

Zorian couldn’t help but remember how his first meeting with Silverlake had gone. If he remembered

correctly, he had just been attacked by a particularly large giant brown salamander and had killed it

in self-defense. This was the catalyst that had caused Silverlake to finally reveal herself to him. Back

then he had blithely given her the salamander corpse, not even realizing how valuable it was… and

Silverlake, after receiving something so apparently valuable from him, still decided to send him on a

bunch of fool’s errands without even hearing him out.

That withered old bitch!

“Let’s stop dancing around the issue for a moment,” Zorian said, swallowing down his annoyance in

favor of actually accomplishing something. “This is our offer: the grey hunter’s egg sack in exchange

for a month’s worth of instruction in pocket dimension creation. What do you say?”

“Oh? Pocket dimension creation?” Silverlake said contemplatively, tapping her chin with her index

finger. “So that’s what you’re after. That’s a pretty exotic and high-level skill. Are you sure you’re

even capable of learning it?”

Oh, good – she didn’t deny she possessed the skill in question. Zorian had kind of been afraid that

her hideout was just something she had found through luck and that she wasn’t actually capable of

creating pocket dimensions herself. It would have been a pain trying to find someone else who had

that kind of expertise.

In any case, Zorian didn’t try to convince Silverlake with words – instead, he simply opened a

dimensional gateway straight to Koth right then and there. Silverlake was instantly on guard when he

started casting a spell, but didn’t try to stop him. About half-way through, she seemed to realize what

he was doing and relaxed. Instead, she got an intrigued look on her face, especially when the

dimensional passage itself sprang into existence beside Zorian.

She circled the gate a few times, peering intently at it, before turning to Zorian again.

“Well, you are full of surprises. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stable, well-crafted dimensional

passage,” Silverlake reluctantly admitted.

Zorian smiled. That was only natural. After all, Zorian’s gate creation skills were a fusion of more

orthodox gate creation skills that Xvim had taught him, as well as the insights Zorian had made from

studying the Ibasan permanent gates and seeing the Bakora Gates in action. He doubted many

people had had the opportunity to study so many different gate creation methods.

“As you can see, I’m quite good at dimensionalism,” Zorian said. “And so is my friend Zach, here.

You don’t have to worry about us not being able to follow your instructions.”

“Well that’s good,” Silverlake said with a wide, happy grin. “Then that just leaves the question of

payment. You see… I don’t think the grey hunter’s eggs will be enough to pay for this.”

Zorian didn’t bat an eye at this. He’d fully expected Silverlake to discard their initial offer and reach

out for more. Someone as greedy and insatiable as she was would never agree to a person’s first

offer.

It was good then, that he had many more things to offer.

“I could dispute that, but I am feeling generous today,” said Zorian. He motioned for Zach to take out

the orb of the first emperor, which he promptly did. “What my friend is holding is a portable pocket

dimension holding an ancient ruin. It’s a lost artifact from the Age of Gods, probably impossible to

reproduce in modern times. If you agree to this deal, we will allow you to study the artifact for the

duration of our lessons. I’m sure you can imagine how beneficial this could be for your own pocket

dimension creation skills.”

Silverlake clearly could imagine, because she stared at the orb with such intensity that Zorian was

afraid she would attack them both on the spot and try to take it from them. But after a few seconds,

she shook her head and tore her eyes away from the orb.

“Throw in that modified Gate spell of yours and we have a deal,” Silverlake said.

“Ah, no, I can’t agree to that,” said Zorian with fake sadness. “Still, that spell isn’t completely out of

the question… if you agree to some additional concessions.”

Silverlake scowled at him, but Zorian completely ignored her displeasure. If she could be greedy, so

could he. He could tell she really wanted that Gate spell, so why not get everything he could out of

it?

“I suppose you have something specific in mind?” she asked him.

“I want to acquire the ability of soul perception,” Zorian said. “And unfortunately, the potion made out

of dirge moth chrysalises is not an option.”

“Yes, that potion doesn’t keep well at all,” Silverlake confirmed. “It can last six months at most, and

even that’s pushing it. But really, why are you bothering me with such a minor request? Just go kill

some people. That’s how nearly all necromancers get that ability these days. Even if you have no

talent whatsoever at soul magic, you should be able to get it after twenty or so sacrifices.”

“That isn’t an option,” Zorian said, glaring at her lightly. “At all. If I have to ritually murder people to

get the ability, I’d rather give up on the idea.”

“Bah,” Silverlake spat. “What’s a touchy-feely, squeamish kid like you trying to get soul perception

for, then? You’ll never achieve anything worth a damn in soul magic with that attitude.”

“I may need it to save my life,” Zorian told her. “It’s not something you need to worry about. The

question is: can you do it? Can you make me a potion that can grant me soul perception in less than

a month’s time?”

“Hmph,” Silverlake scoffed. “Do you even know how difficult it is to acquire soul perception through a

mere potion?”

“Yes,” Zorian said decisively. “I really do. That’s why I came to you for help.”

Truthfully, most of what Zorian knew about that came from Sudomir, who had been extensively

interrogated for his knowledge in previous restarts. Alanic contributed some, but the scarred battle

priest was cagey about his knowledge of necromancy and outright admitted to be inferior to Sudomir

in that regard. Anyway… apparently, all souls had some measure of soul perception in them by

default, but it was tightly locked and unavailable for use. Alanic’s explanation for this was that soul

perception was something the gods intended to be only activated after death, to help guide the soul

to its destination, and that its premature activation on the material plane was ‘dangerously tempting’.

Thus, the gods sealed it away until death, lest it lead people to heresy and sin. Sudomir’s

explanation was that this ability was something inherent to souls themselves, and that the gods had

selfishly sealed it away because they were afraid of humanity’s power and ingenuity. Considering

necromancers tended to be wildly immoral, Zorian was kind of leaning towards Alanic’s side of the

argument.

It didn’t matter, though. Even Alanic admitted that soul perception wasn’t evil by itself. The

Triumvirate Church urged people not to deliberately seek it out, but at the same time they

encouraged its use among their priesthood. Every high-ranking priest and quite a few lower-ranking

ones had some measure of soul perception. With the disappearance of the gods, the Triumvirate

Church had to find a way to make up for their loss of divinely-granted powers… and granting soul

perception abilities to their priesthood on a mass scale was one of the methods used. It was the

Triumvirate Church who developed and perfected the dirge moth potion – the most affordable and

reliable alchemical method of gaining soul perception to date. It was just that the recipe for the

potion was so simple and distributed so widely that it eventually leaked outside the Church hierarchy

and became wildly employed in necromantic circles.

Zorian once felt it was strange that a potion only available in 23-year intervals would be so attractive

to people… but then he found a fragmentary recipe for an alternative potion in Sudomir’s memories

and immediately realized why. The ingredients required absolutely couldn’t be acquired either in

stores or on the black market. These were the sort of things one needed to personally seek out in

the wild and dangerous corners of the world… and most of the ingredients came attached to

creatures possessing some method of attacking the soul. Even for Zach and Zorian those things

were a major danger. In order to make a potion outlined in Sudomir’s memories, one would have to

possess top-notch connections or a great deal of time to track down all the ingredients, have enough

power to claim them, and then find someone with enough alchemical skill to make a complicated

potion they had probably never made in their life and succeed on their first try.

On top of that, all such potions were based on the same basic principle – they brought the imbiber

on the very brink of death, only to pull them back at the very last moment. Very much like that

‘special training’ Alanic had put him through, only even more extreme. Needless to say, if you made

that kind of potion incorrectly, you were highly likely to die on the spot after drinking it. Dirge moths

may only come every twenty-three years, but they were rather abundant when they did show up,

thus allowing alchemists to actually practice with the ingredients.

Of course, there were other methods of getting soul perception. They just weren’t very useful for

him.

For instance, one could simply be born with it. Some people had innate soul sight, called ‘ghost

eyes’ by the scholars, much like he had been born innately empathic and capable of instinctive mind

magic. He obviously wasn’t one of these. Some people, after almost dying, unlocked the ability by

accident. But this was something that couldn’t be counted on, since nobody knew how that really

worked. Finally, there was a really simple, accessible method involving a sacrificial ritual. All one

needed to do was forge a temporary soul bond with a person and then kill them. Slowly. While

keeping them conscious, because of course it wouldn’t work otherwise. This was the method

Sudomir used, and the method that most budding necromancers used, since it was cheap and easy

to set up.

Having experienced what the procedure entailed from Sudomir’s memories, Zorian knew he didn’t

have what it took to go through that. He was, as Silverlake said, way too squeamish to basically

torture a dozen people to death.

“If you know how difficult those potions are, then surely you understand that making one of those in

a month is nonsense, even for me. Just gathering the ingredients alone–”

“Whatever ingredients you need, we will procure for you,” said Zach, cutting her off. “You only need

to put them together into something that works.”

“Hmm,” Silverlake said, humming to herself thoughtfully. “You did kill the grey hunter while not

damaging its egg sack in the slightest. That speaks well of your combat skills. Still, gathering

ingredients for an old-fashioned soul perception potion will require you to have at least elementary

soul defenses.”

“We have those,” Zach told her.

“You do?” she asked, sounding surprised. “Well fine then. So long as you take care of ingredient

collection, I guess I can make you a potion of soul perception. But only that! I will not give you the

recipe or allow you to watch the creation process itself.”

“Acceptable,” Zorian nodded. He waited for a few seconds, but it did not seem like she would say

anything else. “So, do we have a deal then? In exchange for the grey hunter’s eggs, research

access to the portable pocket dimension in our possession and my expertise with the Gate spell, you

agree to teach us pocket dimension creation and make us a potion of soul perception.”

Silverlake stood silently, mulling the deal in her head. She frowned and grimaced to herself,

occasionally breaking into indecipherable muttering and strange gestures. Zorian watched her

suspiciously, worried that she was trying to slip in some stealthy spellcasting in all that nonsense,

but it all seemed to be completely innocuous. Well, as innocuous as that kind of unstable behavior

could be, anyway.

“I have a question,” she finally said. Zorian motioned her to continue. “Earlier, you told me that wild

story about this month endlessly repeating itself and how I lose all memory of it while you don’t.

Wouldn’t that mean that everything I gain in this deal is illusionary, while everything you gain from it

will actually stay with you?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that,” Zorian remarked.

“Let’s pretend I do for a moment,” Silverlake said without batting an eye. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong,” Zorian shook his head. “In the grand scheme of things, this deal heavily favors

us. Everything you gain will be gone at the end of this month, while the knowledge we gain and the

unlocking of my soul perception will stay with us for future use.”

“Then… don’t you think it’s stupid to tell me that?” Silverlake asked him curiously. She didn’t seem to

be actually angry, merely interested in the logic he used to arrive to his decision. “I mean, I don’t

actually believe that nonsense you’re spouting, but if I did, it would make me totally unwilling to

accept this deal of yours.”

“I’m thinking towards the future,” Zorian told her calmly. “It’s not possible for me to absorb your

pocket dimension creation skills in less than a month. We both know this. I will be coming over here

with this same deal again and again, and I’ll need to continue from where we left off in the previous

restart. I might be able to fool you at first with lies of having learned the basics from someone else,

but that will quickly get untenable. At some point, I will have to explain how I know skills that are

obviously yours… even though you don’t remember teaching me.”

“Well, that’s all good but… how does this help you right now?” Silverlake asked expectantly.

“Right now would be a good time to discover something I can use to convince the future you I am

telling the truth,” Zorian said. “You might not believe me, exactly, but you’re clearly willing to

entertain the idea for a time… as your current line of questioning amply proves.”

She scowled at him, but he ignored her displeasure.

“Basically, I am hoping you will eventually tell me something that I can show off to your future self in

order to convince her that the time loop is real and we really have met before… even if she has no

memory of it.”

Silverlake stared at him for a moment before breaking into cackling laughter.

Zorian sighed. He really didn’t see what was so funny about that.

“Boy, you are madder than I am!” She finally wheezed out, punching herself in the chest a couple of

times to get her laughing under control. “Anyway, I accept your deal! And since I’m in a good mood

right now, I’ll throw in a reward for you! You want a secret? I’ll give you a good one. The reason I

need those grey hunter’s eggs and the body of a hundred-year-old giant salamander is because I’m

working on a potion of youth.”

“You’re trying to stave off death from old age?” Zach asked, surprised. “Wow. That’s an incredibly

advanced skill. I heard from Zorian you were a master alchemist, but I didn’t know you

were that good.”

“Silly boy,” Silverlake chuckled. “I’m not trying to stave off old age. I already have that.”

They were both struck speechless at the admission. An immortal!?

“Ha ha!” Silverlake cackled. “Surprised, aren’t you? Yes, I could persist like this indefinitely. Don’t get

fooled by my dashing good looks – I’m positively ancient.”

“How ancient?” Zach asked cautiously.

“It’s impolite to inquire about a lady’s age,” she said with mock bashfulness. “But it’s a three digit

number, I can tell you that much. Anyway, I did a fine job of stopping time from ravaging my body,

but this isn’t good enough for me. I want my youth back. And with those spider eggs you brought me,

I’m only one step away from that goal.”

A short silence descended on the scene, Zach and Zorian being at a loss what to say about that.

“Pretty good secret, isn’t it?” Silverlake said.

She told them all this just so she could brag about how amazing she was, didn’t she?

“Yes,” Zorian coughed. “Yes, it is. Anyway, about this trade…”

“Come back here two days from now,” Silverlake said dismissively. “You came here completely

unannounced, so you’ve caught me completely unprepared. My house is a total mess right now,

completely unsuitable for entertaining guests. I need to get some extra chairs out of the basement,

dust off the furniture and maybe prepare some refreshments. I think I still have some of that

mushroom cake I experimented with a few years back. I know that sounds a little dodgy, but it keeps

really well and it gives you such wonderful dreams…”

“The eggs stay with us until we meet again, then,” Zorian warned her, completely ignoring her

banter.

“Hmph,” Silverlake scoffed. “Fine, be that way. Paranoid brats. Make sure to stash them in a dry,

dark place with plenty of ambient mana around or they’ll get ruined and the deal will be off!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Zorian nodded. The eggs were a lot simpler to preserve than he feared, then.

“Just to make sure, this thing is safe, right? The eggs won’t hatch in a few hours and release a

bunch of tough little spider monsters everywhere, right?”

“No, no, no… well, they shouldn’t…” Silverlake said, hesitating slightly.

“We’re stashing them well away from any populated areas,” Zach said decisively. “And when we go

to retrieve it, we’re sending one of your simulacrums in first.”

“Hey!” the simulacrum currently present protested.

“Stop that,” Silverlake snapped at them. “It will be fine. Trust me.”

All three of them gave Silverlake an unamused look, clearly telling her how they felt about her

reliability and trustworthiness.

“Kids these days, no respect for their elders…” she muttered angrily. “Well, off with you then! Go

away. This has been such a pleasant meeting thus far, it’s best to end things on a high note. Don’t

forget to bring gifts the next time we meet! Honestly, I can’t believe you two came to visit someone

and didn’t even bring them a bottle of brandy or something. Don’t you know that gift-giving is an

important tradition? No, don’t answer that, I was just lecturing you, not actually asking you for your

opinion. Go. Shoo!”

And thus their meeting with Silverlake ended – with her shooing them away like a bunch of naughty

cats loitering around her backyard. Still, they’d largely achieved what they came for, so Zorian was

happy.

He just hoped she was actually going to keep to her end of the bargain.

- break -

When Zach and Zorian came to visit Silverlake again, she was standing next to a humble cottage,

messily butchering a pair of giant brown salamanders. These were smaller specimens, incomparable

to the giant that had tried to eat Zorian so long ago, so Zorian assumed they were not the sort she

needed to complete her potion of youth… but apparently she still had some use for even younger

salamanders. In any case, she welcomed them with a wide smile and an immediate demand to hand

over the spider eggs. They did so, patiently waiting as she ignored them entirely for over a minute in

favor of inspecting the eggs for damage and whatever else she was looking for. She ushered them

into her cottage, which proved to be less of an actual cottage and more of a disguise for the

entrance to her pocket dimension.

Well, the inner layer of her pocket dimension. The cottage itself was also hidden in its own pocket

dimension, which is why Zorian couldn’t find it by just wandering the forest. But the cottage

dimension was just the outer layer of her hidden world, one that could be deployed (thereby

becoming actually accessible to visitors) and compressed (seemingly disappearing from the world

entirely) on a whim. Nested inside this cottage dimension was another, bigger pocket dimension,

which served as Silverlake’s actual home and base of operations.

In Silverlake’s own words, the cottage was ‘just a front to fool idiot visitors’.

As for the contents of the inner layer, it consisted of three things: a nice, luxurious two-story house,

an expansive herb garden full of rare magical plants and a heavily warded alchemical workshop

where she did most of her work.

Yes, a powerful witch that was clearly very proud of her traditions and made distinctions between

alchemy and ‘potion making’ had a fully equipped alchemical workshop that would be familiar to any

conventional alchemist out in the major cities. Zorian couldn’t help but find that a little amusing.

It had been five days since then, and thus far Silverlake was keeping to her side of the deal. Zorian

was afraid she would try to shirk her duties as an instructor, giving them inscrutable training

regimens that weren’t certain to work before disappearing into her workshop for the rest of the day,

but this didn’t happen. Probably because they were deep inside her home base and there was a real

danger that they could torch her home and herb garden if they felt cheated by her. Or maybe

because she really wanted the Gate spell modifications and knew that the level of cooperation she

could expect out of Zach and Zorian in regards to that would directly correlate to the level of

dedication she showed when teaching them how to make pocket dimensions. Whatever her

reasons, Silverlake actually gave them long, exhaustive explanations and even created a few fist-

sized pocket spaces in front of them as a demonstration.

Creating a pocket dimension was deceptively simple. The basic idea was to stretch and fold a

chosen volume of space into a miniature spatial bottle and sort of… cap it. This ‘cap’ was called the

anchor point and it prevented the folded space from snapping back into its natural form the moment

it was no longer being forced into shape, as space was naturally wont to do. After that, the pocket

dimension could be gradually inflated to the maximum size the anchor point could bear.

Obviously, the creation of an anchor point was the most important part of pocket dimension creation.

It was the place where the dimension was connected to the main reality, and served as both an

entrance and as a foundation upon which the stability of the dimension ultimately rested. Its size,

power and sophistication determined how big and stable a pocket dimension could be. If it was ever

destroyed, the dimension attached to it would quickly meet the same fate.

Neither Zach nor Zorian had yet managed to successfully create a stable anchor point, no matter

how minor. The process was every bit as hard as learning how to cast the Gate spell, except it

required even more mana and attention to detail. Zorian was somewhat annoyed to realize that Zach

would probably get the grasp of the ability far sooner than he would, simply because he had far more

mana to burn on training than Zorian did.

It didn’t help that Zorian had heavily stunted his ability to recover mana by maintaining six different

simulacrums. Funny how he invented a brand new method of using simulacrums, halving the

maintenance cost of each one… and then promptly doubled the amount of simulacrums he kept

going at any particular time.

Currently, Zorian was sitting on the ground in Silverlake’s pocket dimension, reviewing reports from

his simulacrums while he waited for his mana reserves to recover. One of the simulacrums was in

Koth, brainstorming how to get to the other pieces of the Key with Daimen. Another was raiding the

academy library for restricted theory books on advanced dimensionalism. The third one was

arranging a trade deal with one of the minor experts they were approaching for work. The fourth and

fifth ones were working on upgrades to the simulacrum’s golem frames. Not quite something he’d

invest so heavily in normally, but he had little choice – all simulacrums went on a strike until he

agreed to permanently station two of the copies on that particular task.

Finally, the sixth and last simulacrum was working on something very delicate and possibly

dangerous – mental enhancements.

It was pretty low-key for now. He didn’t want an insane copy of him rampaging around, or worse,

going after him. Additionally, the simulacrums were still essentially him, which meant they were not

at all okay with thoughtlessly risking their minds. Taking into account the possible risks to his own

safety, and the disturbing possibility that his own simulacrums might mutiny if he pushed things too

far in this direction, Zorian had ordered the last simulacrum to limit himself to self-inflicted illusions

for now. Things like figuring out how to block out noise and other distractions, add highlights and

reminders to his perception, and so on. It was a very orthodox, very safe sub-field of mental

enhancements. Because it only modified the caster’s senses, not their thoughts and emotions, there

was only so much one could mess up, and little of it was unfixable. Human mages had done quite a

lot of work in this regard, mostly because they had been trying to make divinations that could display

their output though illusions projected on the caster’s senses. Of course, Zorian also consulted the

various aranean webs too. The Luminous Advocates and Perfect Phantasm Crafters were the two

webs most helpful to this project, though he had also received notable help from several otherwise

minor webs such as Band of Fog and Dreaming Refuge.

“Boy, I told you to keep an eye on that cauldron,” Silverlake snapped at him, breaking him out of his

thoughts. “It’s going to boil over if you keep daydreaming like that. Quit it. It’s unprofessional.”

“Ugh,” Zorian grunted unhappily, throwing a glance at the huge iron cauldron to his left. Silverlake

did basically rope him into helping her with her alchemy – sorry, potion making – while he recovered.

However it was only supposed to be for 10 minutes and she had only come back now to take over,

after at least half an hour had passed.

“We never agreed I would be your personal assistant when we made the trade. I should start

charging you for these things,” Zorian muttered, just loud enough for her to hear him. She pretended

he didn’t say anything. He raised his voice at her. “What is that cauldron even doing? If you’re going

to recruit me in your projects, you should at least tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s an experiment,” Silverlake said distractedly, too busy cleaning some kind of carrot-like wild root

to look him in the eye while speaking. “I’m sure you noticed me chopping up those runty

salamanders in the last few days. I’m trying to artificially concentrate the salamander’s regenerative

essence to see if I can create a workable substitute for the hundred-year-old salamander that I lack.

Probably won’t work, but eh. It’s worth a try.”

“Regenerative essence?” Zorian said, frowning. “Is that what the giant salamander is for?”

“Of course,” Silverlake said. “They can regrow anything, repair any damage. If you carve them

carefully enough, both halves will regrow into fully healthy, functional copies. Useful thing, that. Most

healing magic simply enhances and accelerates the body's natural healing abilities, so it doesn’t

work well on some wounds. The salamander’s regenerative essence, if concentrated enough and

combined with some other ingredients… why, it might even turn back the clock and undo the effect

of old age!”

“Hmm,” Zorian hummed thoughtfully. Okay, so this was slightly more interesting than he assumed.

Still… “So why are you doing it like this, doing the procedure under the open sky, in a simple iron

cauldron? You have an alchemy workshop that nearly every professional alchemist would be

envious of. Why not use it?”

“Hmph. Shows what you know,” Silverlake said. “I’m doing it this way because this is the superior

option. It’s good enough for the job. Doing this with a complicated alchemical setup wouldn’t get stuff

done any faster or give better results – it would just inflict wear and tear on delicate equipment and

be a nightmare to clean up afterwards.”

Zorian had nothing to say to that. Her argument did make a lot of sense, after all.

They both stayed silent for a while. Eventually Silverlake finally finished preparing the wild roots and

unceremoniously dumped them into the boiling cauldron. She watched the liquid bubble for a few

seconds, before nodding sagely to herself and adding a couple of wooden planks to the fire.

“Do you know what the difference between alchemy and potion making is, boy?” Silverlake asked

suddenly, glancing at him with narrowed eyes.

Zorian was tempted to tell her that potion making was just a subset of alchemy, but he knew she

would consider that a wrong answer.

She was asking about potion making in the sense that ancient witches understood it, not in the

sense that was currently taught in schools.

“Potion making focuses on using a cauldron, and nothing else, to make their wares,” Zorian said.

“Yes,” Silverlake agreed. “Sounds very foolish, doesn’t it? A botched potion can release clouds of

poisonous or mutagenic gas, explode in your face or splash all over you and melt your skin. Hell, a

correctly made potion can be just as bad! Very often, old witches carried a mark of their minor

failures in the form of scars, strange odors and skin diseases from the years of exposure to magical

fumes and concoctions. Modern alchemy is so much safer, so much more precise. Why, then, do you

think the old witches do things in the way they did?”

Zorian cocked his head to the side, trying to figure out what she was getting at. What’s that got to do

with anything?

“Because it was… cheaper?” he tried.

“Ha. Close,” Silverlake said. “It’s because alchemy, in its current form, requires an entire society built

to enable it. Somebody has to build all the vials, containers, heaters, and other equipment.

Somebody needs to grow, gather and track down the ingredients used in it. Somebody needs to

transport and distribute it to those that need it… or have the right connections to use it. Somebody

needs to guard the workshops full of valuable equipment from thieves and various miscreants. The

old witches had access to none of that, so they had to make do with chucking things into a big iron

cauldron and eyeballing things. It is, as you said, cheaper. Cheaper in terms of money and also

cheaper in terms of social infrastructure needed to support it.”

“I see,” Zorian said after a while.

“These days there are virtually no witches that do not use alchemy in some form, in addition to their

traditional cauldron-based skills,” Silverlake continued. “The ancient covens would have considered

us all heretics, I bet. But the ancient covens have all died out to my knowledge, and that’s hardly an

accident. Times change. The covens didn’t and paid the price for it. Alchemy has its place… as does

potion making. Don’t be so quick to look down on it.”

“You made that entire long-winded speech just to deliver that little lecture at the end of it, didn’t

you?” Zorian huffed in annoyance.

“You’re going to remember it better this way,” Silverlake cackled. She prodded the bubbling liquid in

the cauldron with an iron ladle she used to mix it. “Well, whatever, I think we can leave this be for a

few hours. You recovered yet, boy? I say, you sure take your time with your rest – it’s a miracle you

got this far with such an awful work ethic. Why, when I was your age, we…”

Zorian sighed and got up, doing his best to drown out her moralizing. He sent a quick message

through his soul to the simulacrum working on implementing sensory filters, telling it to work quickly.

He was going to need those skills as soon as possible.

Chapter 075

Soul Stealer

The great wilderness that existed in the north of Altazia was a place that contained many rare and

valuable things. Exotic natural resources, interesting locations, magical plants and animals extinct in

the south… all of those and more could be located if one was willing to spend time searching for

them and was strong enough to survive deep in the untamed mountains and forests. This wasn’t

because the northern wilderness was particularly blessed in natural resources and magical hot-

spots, of course, but simply because most of it had never been settled and systematically exploited

by human societies. The southern areas had once had these kinds of things as well, but the spread

of civilization and rising number of mages had caused many of them to disappear. Mines were

depleted, forests chopped down and turned into farmlands, Dungeon openings sealed away or

turned into carefully-regulated mana wells, delicate areas destroyed through war or short-term greed

and dangerous plants and animals deliberately hunted to extinction. After all, nobody wanted to live

next to a man-eating magical tiger or a walking tree that periodically planted itself in your field and

ruined the crops, no matter how valuable they were to some mage in the neighboring country.

Such was the case with the plant that Zach and Zorian were currently after. The soulseizer

chrysanthemum, as it was called, was one of the rare entities that ate souls. Since nobody wanted a

soul-eating flower growing in their garden – or anywhere near them, really – the plant rapidly went

extinct any time humans moved into an area. Thus, if Zach and Zorian wanted to find one, they had

to go to the wild areas untouched by most of humanity.

Currently, the two of them were hiding under a globe of invisibility, warily watching a huge black bear

amble past them. Though the bear wasn’t truly a life-threatening danger to them, they were in no

mood to pick a fight with it. It was a resilient monster, and no part of its body was particularly

valuable on the general market. Considering they had been trudging through the dense foliage of the

Great Northern Forest for most of the day, they really just wanted to find where the soulseizer

chrysanthemum was hiding and go home.

Thankfully, the bear did not appear to be hunting and paid little attention to its surroundings. It simply

walked past them and soon disappeared from sight.

Zach dispelled the globe of invisibility that hid them from sight and then cautiously scanned the area

for further dangers. Although not as dangerous as the deeper layers of the Dungeon and the like,

Altazia’s northern forests were not a place for the unwary. This deep in the wilderness, there lurked

threats that posed a danger even to Zach and Zorian working together, should they be caught by

surprise.

“Gathering all these ingredients on Silverlake’s list is surprisingly hard,” Zach said, relaxing slightly

upon detecting nothing of note. “They’re rare, dangerous, or both, and Silverlake never gave us a

single clue where we could find any of them… and yet, the task is still clearly doable, so we can’t

really complain about being given a completely impossible task. The old witch really has a knack for

this stuff.”

“I’m half-convinced that most of these are not necessary for the potion at all,” Zorian said, sighing

lightly. He spent a few seconds reorienting himself and then set off in the northwestern direction.

Zach followed him without complaint. “She probably added quite a few of these because she

personally needs them for something, not because the potion we ordered demands it. The trouble

is–”

“We have no idea which ingredients are essential and which are not,” Zach finished for him. “She

never lets us see the actual recipe. We can only speculate and try to call her bluff, but we’re more

pressed for time than she is and she knows it. She wouldn’t relent, even if we guessed correctly, and

might even up the price out of spite.”

“Yes,” Zorian nodded. “Whatever. It’s doable, that’s all that matters. Let her have her little victory if it

pleases her.”

“True,” Zach agreed. “Say, are you really sure we’re in the right place? We’ve been looking for more

than two hours and the flower doesn’t appear to be here. Maybe the yeti tribe we spoke to lied to us.

Relations between them and humans are not exactly the best.”

“The tribe’s shaman didn’t lie,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “He thinks we’re cocky idiots that will

get our souls eaten by the soulseizer chrysanthemum, so he told us the truth as he saw it. He gets

the payment we promised him and two humans end up dead. It’s a win-win as far as he was

concerned. It’s just that yetis don’t really have any concept of maps or precise coordinates, so all I

have is a set of vague directions regarding the local landmarks. Just be a little patient.”

“But this is so boring,” Zach whined childishly.

“Tough luck,” Zorian told him pitilessly.

Zach was quiet for a few seconds before he started talking again.

“You know, the idea of fighting a flower is kind of funny. And embarrassing,” he said.

“I don’t know,” Zorian said. “I think fighting those rabbits a few days back was way more

embarrassing. Especially since both of us ended up getting bitten before we managed to bring them

down.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me,” Zach groused. “Those have got to be one of those fake ingredients

Silverlake added to the list. I mean, how are a bunch of rabbits like that related to a potion of soul

perception?”

“I think those red gems embedded in their foreheads were some kind of sensors,” Zorian speculated.

“They did see through our every attempt to sneak up on them.”

The two of them spent the next half an hour discussing which of the ingredients were likely to be

fake, only to realize that none of them were obvious imposters. They could all potentially be valid,

which meant that either Zorian was too paranoid or Silverlake was very clever when picking her

additions. Zorian was leaning towards the second option.

“I know we already talked about this before visiting Silverlake, but are you really sure this is even

necessary?” Zach eventually asked. Seeing Zorian’s confused look, he moved to clarify. “Acquiring

soul sight, I mean. Are you really sure you need it?”

“Of course I’m not sure,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Maybe once we get the whole key,

everything will be neatly resolved, and me getting soul sight will end up being a pointless diversion.

The thing is, even if the Guardian of the Threshold overlooks the fact there are two of us and places

our souls back into our bodies, there is a problem…”

“Your original body still has its old soul,” Zach said.

“Well, it would be more accurate to say that the body I hope to inhabit was never truly mine to begin

with,” Zorian said. “But yes, that’s the core issue. If I want out, I need to steal my real world body

somehow. I guess this could be done by convincing the Guardian to switch my soul with that of the

original, but… the Guardian has made it clear that this goes against the very nature of his job. I’m

skeptical that acquiring the Key will let us ignore this.”

“I get that,” Zach said. “But maybe you don’t have to literally steal the body, you know? Maybe you

can kind of, you know… coexist with your old self?”

“An interesting idea,” Zorian said. “I don’t know enough about soul magic to say if that would be

possible, but… that kind of thing would still require me to acquire soul perception first.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Zach sighed.

They walked through the forest in silence for a few seconds, Zorian keeping an eye out for that

funny-shaped rock outcropping that the old yeti had told him about. It should be around here…

“What’s really on your mind?” Zorian eventually asked.

“You know I’m not really sure that I’m the real Controller of this time loop,” Zach said. “And if I’m

not… I could be facing the same choice you are.”

“Ah,” Zorian said, nodding. Personally, he felt Zach’s fears were unfounded, but he knew by now it

was useless to tell him that. “I see.”

“Do you think I should try to acquire soul perception too?” Zach asked. “I’m not nearly as comfortable

as you are in killing my old self, but I have to admit… if I have to choose between myself and him…”

“It would be the safe thing to do,” Zorian told him. Concerns about not being the true Controller

aside, he didn’t see any particular downsides about Zach acquiring soul perception. “But best not to

try that in this particular restart. We have no idea how the safety triggers on your marker are going to

react to a potion like that. I mean, they did terminate the restart when you tried to undergo Alanic’s

training, remember?”

“I remember,” Zach scowled. “If it weren’t for that, I would have had simulacrums of my own by now.”

“Right. They could easily trigger this time too, since the potion works on similar principles,” Zorian

remarked. “It’s best if we wait for a less interesting restart before testing this.”

“Yeah, I’m in no hurry,” Zach said. He glanced around the area they were traveling in. “How long do

you think it will take you to find this soul-eating flower? Maybe we should stop for now and come

back tomorrow?”

“Actually…” Zorian began, his eyes zeroing in on a bunch of seemingly unremarkable trees, “we’re

here.”

He pointed at the base of one of the trees, where a beautiful white flower proudly sprouted from the

forest floor.

There was nothing overtly supernatural or sinister about the soulseizer chrysanthemum. It was a

large plant, but not monstrously huge. Its leaves and stalk were the most mundane of green, easily

blending into the rest of the nearby vegetation. A single white flower the size of Zorian’s head

crowned the otherwise unremarkable plant, its numerous rows of petals folded inwards into a sort of

flowery hemisphere.

This sort of peaceful, unremarkable appearance was merely a trap, though. Since the soulseizer

chrysanthemum was immobile, most of the time it behaved as inconspicuously as possible to lure its

victims near. The moment Zach or Zorian stepped close enough, the flower would reveal its true

nature.

“You know how I said earlier that the idea of fighting a flower is kind of funny?” Zach asked.

“Yeah?” Zorian prompted.

“I take it back,” Zach said. “There is nothing funny about a dangerous creature that hides itself so

thoroughly. I looked straight at it and I still can’t see any sign of danger. If we hadn’t been clued-in in

advance about its true nature and where exactly it can be found, we’d never have noticed it.”

“Mm,” Zorian hummed in agreement. “If you really think about it, this is one of the most dangerous

enemies we could possibly face. Stuff like the grey hunter could kill us, but the time loop makes that

just an inconvenience. But this flower? If we stumbled upon it by accident, without being mentally

ready or applying some kind of soul ward beforehand, there is a good chance we’d really end up

with our souls devoured by it.”

“Well, you would,” Zach pointed out cheekily. “The safeguards on my marker would probably kick in

the moment my soul was torn away from my body. You, on the other hand, would be thoroughly

doomed. You know what soul devouring entities do, right?”

“They flay the outer layers of the soul for nourishment and keep the indestructible core as a sort of

mana battery,” Zorian said. “Or in the case of wraiths, they use the core to make more of their kind. I

don’t know how fast this process is, but even if it takes a while, I’d probably end up with my soul

severely damaged by the time the restart ended. I would probably spend every single restart

thereafter in a deep coma and stay that way until the time loop collapsed.”

They both stared at the seemingly peaceful flower for about a minute, both of them lost in their own

thoughts.

“Alright, enough dawdling,” Zach suddenly said, clapping his hands loudly to wake up Zorian from

his reverie. “Let’s get this thing uprooted and chopped up into ingredients!”

After discussing it for a few minutes, they decided it would be best if only one of them confronted the

chrysanthemum. The other would stay back and be ready to extract them if something went wrong.

This, however, led to the issue of who would be staying back and who should advance upon the

dangerous plant.

The argument was surprisingly charged, with both of them arguing that they should be the ones

attacking. Zorian argued that his soul defenses were better than Zach’s by far and that they couldn’t

afford to get into the habit of triggering premature restarts. Zach, on the other hand, argued this was

dumb and that he should definitely be the one making the attempt. Zorian might have much better

soul defenses, but if they proved to be insufficient, he could wind up permanently dead in all future

restarts. In light of that sort of risk, who cares about a single interrupted restart?

“This is beyond stupid,” Zach told him. “You don’t even like fighting!”

“But I fight when I have to,” Zorian countered. “Besides, I think you’re exaggerating the level of

danger I would be in. If you see me slump dead, immediately kill yourself. That will trigger a restart

and get my soul out of its stomach. I doubt the chrysanthemum can mutilate my soul in such a short

time.”

Zach scowled at him. “Any plan that involves me committing suicide is a bad plan. I swear, I still

can’t believe you were wearing a bomb around your neck before getting control of your restart

trigger…”

“Actually, I still carry a bomb around my neck,” Zorian told him, showing Zach the plain-looking

golden chain he usually kept tucked into his shirt. His spell formula skills had advanced to such an

extent by now that the chain was no longer obviously a magic item – unless one specifically decided

to inspect it with analytic spells, it would look just like a mundane accessory. “Having more

contingencies is always useful, after all. Still, I guess you have a point… I don’t think I’d fail here, but

the worst scenario is worrying. Tell you what – I will agree to back off here, but if you fail and end up

cutting the restart short, I get to confront the chrysanthemum the next time around. Deal?”

“Deal,” Zach nodded. “If I can’t do it now, I probably won’t be able to do it on the second or third

attempts either. I guess it is kind of unreasonable of me to cut restart after restart short like that. I still

feel an urge to hit myself when I think of all the restarts I frittered away by doing just that…”

Then Zach started walking towards the flower, and all their arguments were revealed to have been

moot. The soulseizer chrysanthemum twisted itself to face them both, the flower stalk moving with

the speed and fluidity alien to normal plants, and a barely perceptible ripple emanated from it,

covering a spherical area easily large enough to cover them both.

They had been within its striking range all along. It just chose not to attack them immediately.

Fast and omnidirectional, the ethereal ripple released by the chrysanthemum was impossible to

dodge. Zorian, caught off guard by the attack, could do nothing except take it head on. Zach, having

expected some kind of response from the flower, had successfully erected a shield around himself

before it hit. It didn’t matter, though – the ripple passed through the shield like it wasn’t there at all. It

slammed into both of them at almost the same time, sending them reeling.

Zorian felt sick in a way he had never experienced before in his life. His vision swam, assailed by

numberless fleeting illusions and flashing lights, and his ears felt like a bomb had gone off right next

to him. His sense of balance went completely haywire, his skin stung all over and his stomach

churned like something was trying to tear itself out of him. It took a monumental act of will not to

vomit all over himself and collapse on the ground. It was some kind of stun attack, Zorian realized.

An incredibly complex stun attack, weaving together physical, mental and spiritual aspects into one

unified whole.

Zorian reached into his own mind and forcibly shattered the mental aspect of the stun. The whole

structure of the attack immediately became unbalanced, allowing Zorian to stabilize his condition

somewhat. His vision cleared up a bit, and he saw Zach collapse to his knees, hands shaking, and

vomit all over the forest floor. That… wasn’t much of a surprise, to be honest. Zach was not as adept

as Zorian in defending either his mind or his soul, and he was closer to the chrysanthemum when it

attacked.

Before Zorian could do anything, the soulseizer chrysanthemum turned towards him. Perhaps

because he had weathered its stun effect better than Zach, or because he was closer to the border

of its attack radius and it worried he would flee, but the flower chose to deal with him first. Its

multitude of petals erupted with ghostly blue flame and unfolded like a mouth full of teeth, revealing a

pitch black area in the middle of the flower.

Zorian’s soul immediately started vibrating in his body, sending waves of pain throughout his very

being. Normally, this level of soul attack would never be able to seriously threaten Zorian… but with

the aftereffect of the stun still lingering, resisting the pull of the flower was proving difficult. And the

effect wasn’t stopping. Instead, the suction only seemed to get stronger as time went by and the

flower searched for a firmer grip on his soul.

Despite that, Zorian was not worried. Before it attacked, the flower felt just like any other plant in the

forest. It had no discernible mind, and thus nothing that Zorian could target with his mind magic.

Now, however, he could very much feel a thinking mind behind the chrysanthemum.

He gathered all of his concentration and then launched a massive telepathic attack at the plant’s

mind. This time, it was the flower’s turn to reel back in shock. Its attack on Zorian’s soul immediately

ceased as it silently shook and waved around, trying to stabilize itself.

Zorian wasn’t going to let it have the time. Even though he still hadn’t entirely recovered from the

initial attack, he poured all of his energies into launching one mental attack after another. The flower

resisted fiercely. It was clearly a complete amateur when it came to mental combat, but it possessed

an instinctive ability to form mental barriers and was armed with a powerful magic resistance that

made it difficult and mana expensive for Zorian to target it.

After a while, Zach recovered enough to make his own move. He summoned a massive ghostly

blade and sent it chopping down at the stem of the plant. In all honestly, it looked like compete

overkill and Zorian worried he was going to ruin the chrysanthemum’s value as an alchemical

component. They needed it fairly intact, after all.

The flower was undaunted, though. Threatened by the incoming blade, it spat a stream of glittering

stars out of the black hole in the center of the flower. The glittering motes of light immediately

arranged themselves into a dome-like construct that stopped the blade cold with barely a flicker.

They were soul cores of creatures the chrysanthemum had devoured in the past, Zorian realized.

Somehow, it could control them and shape them into defensive constructs.

Well, not just defensive constructs, it turned out. After Zach and Zorian kept hammering its defenses

for a while, it realized that at the rate things were going, it was going to lose. Its shield was going to

get battered down sooner or later, and Zorian’s strategically launched mental attacks were disrupting

its attempts to launch further soul attacks at them. Upon realizing this, the chrysanthemum reshaped

the soul cores into a series of long, hair-like whips and started flailing them around. Zorian at first

thought the chrysanthemum intended to attack them with those, but it turned out he had once again

underestimated the plant. It quickly wrapped the whips around the nearby branches and uprooted

itself right out of the ground before turning to flee.

Zorian had to admit, seeing an uprooted flower swing about from branch to branch, like some kind of

weird monkey, was a unique experience.

Sadly for the soulseizer chrysanthemum, such desperate measures would not save it. It launched

another stunning pulse at them in an attempt to lose them, and this did slow them down quite a bit,

but in the end it was chased down and killed.

“We have been outsmarted and nearly killed by a flower,” Zach said, still keeping a wary distance

from the chrysanthemum’s remains. “We are never speaking about this again.”

Zorian readily agreed to this request.

- break -

The Esoteric Order of the Celestial Dragon, known to most people as the Cult of the World Dragon,

was more than just a weird religion. It was an entire support organization that helped its members

advance forward in life. They vouched for their fellow members when skills and trustworthiness were

questioned, they helped them get the jobs and mentorships they needed to advance in their careers,

offered their members loans under favorable conditions, granted free access to spell libraries that

would be too restricted or expensive for members to otherwise get and they provided legal aid if

members got into trouble with the mage guild. The higher ranking one had in the Cult, the more

pronounced these advantages got.

This was the main reason why the Cult got so powerful and widespread. The sort of large-scale,

highly treasonous plot that the Cult was currently participating in was not really something that they

usually did. It was actually very, very atypical. For the vast majority of their existence, they had

simply been a mystery cult crossed with a mutual aid society – kind of shady and disreputable, but

nothing that the authorities would go too crazy over. Their biggest enemy was the Triumvirate

Church and their faithful, which considered the Cult’s beliefs to be a direct affront to their dogma.

In any case, an expansive organization like that had more than just direct members of their secret

club to draw upon. They also had a multitude of outside associates and other experts that

sporadically worked with them. Some of these were true faithful that deliberately maintained distance

from the main organization so that outsiders could not easily puzzle out the connections between

them, others were just mercenaries that sporadically took missions from the Cult and some simply

didn’t know who exactly they were working with. Zorian had largely ignored these people during his

investigation into the Cult’s activities, since tracking them all down was an incredibly time-consuming

and difficult task. He had better things to do with his time.

Then Alanic interrogated Sudomir a bunch of times and they discovered that the crazy mayor of

Knyazov Dveri had detailed knowledge of these people. Sudomir appeared to have gone out of his

way to gather as much information about the Cult as possible, worried that they might move against

him at some point. The relations between him and Cult leadership hadn’t been the best since they

realized he intended to publicly advocate for the legalization of necromancy, something they

regarded as lunacy.

Zorian still wasn’t terribly interested in spending time to investigate all these people. He didn’t think

that would result in anything substantial. But Alanic was, and he didn’t have too many other things

vying for his time. Thus, he wholeheartedly threw himself into the investigation, making full use of the

time loop to comb through every lead and scrap of evidence Zorian could wrench from Sudomir’s

mind.

And today, that effort seemed to have borne some kind of fruit. Alanic had notified Zach and Zorian

that he had uncovered something important and told them to meet him next to an unassuming house

in one of Cyoria’s richer neighborhoods.

When they arrived, they found the place cordoned off by the mage guild personnel, but they had

been notified that the two of them were coming and let them through on Alanic’s orders. Once again

Zorian wondered just what position Alanic occupied that he could command people like this, but

Alanic stubbornly refused to answer such questions and Zorian respected the man’s help too much

to go prying into his thoughts.

“You called, we came,” Zach said, waving his hand at Alanic to get his attention. “What do you have

for us?”

“I don’t claim to understand every detail of the… situation you have found yourselves in,” Alanic said,

choosing his words carefully due to the presence of other people in the room, “but I believe you’ve

indicated the name ‘Veyers Boranova’ is important to you, yes?”

Zorian looked at him in shock.

“What? What does Veyers have to do with this? Is he here?” Zach asked.

“In a matter of speaking,” Alanic said evenly. He motioned them to follow him and led them down the

stairs and into the basement beneath the house. “This is the house of one of the lawyers deeply

associated with the Cult of the World Dragon. He is not a member, but he has helped on a number

of occasions and is known to be sympathetic to their organization. I managed to get authorization to

conduct a search of his house and… well, this is what I found when I opened the icebox in his

basement.”

Alanic stopped next to one of the three iceboxes lined up next to the basement wall and

unceremoniously lifted the lid up. Inside was a frozen body of a teenage male, a peaceful expression

on his frosted face.

It was unmistakably Veyers Boranova.

Zach and Zorian stared at the body for nearly half a minute, not saying anything.

“He’s… dead?” Zach asked lamely.

“Indeed,” Alanic said. “I hear neither of you really got along with him well, so I will not offer you

condolences.”

“So the owner of this house…” Zorian began uncertainly.

“Jornak Dokochin,” Alanic told him.

“Yes, this Jornak… did he kill Veyers?” Zorian asked. “When did this happen?”

“He is adamant that he did not kill the boy,” Alanic said. “He claims the boy died of unknown causes

while sleeping. One day he was fine, if a little surly, and the next day Jornak went into his room to

check up on him and found him dead in his bed. I’d normally scoff at that explanation, but the

timing…”

“He died on the first day of the restart, didn’t he?” Zach guessed.

“Yes,” Alanic nodded. “The frost damage and the sheer passage of time make it difficult to tell for

certain, but I’m pretty sure this is the same situation like those aranea beneath Cyoria and the

mercenaries that were found mysteriously dead in their homes.”

“Doesn’t that mean Veyers was soulkilled?” Zach frowned. “He isn’t Red Robe?”

“We can’t say that just from this,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “We have no idea how exactly he

entered the time loop, or what would happen if he left it. For all we know this could be the natural

result of his leaving the time loop.”

“Ugh,” Zach grumbled. “So we found Veyers and yet learned nothing of value. I hate things like this.”

“Well, anyway… I guess Veyers being frozen in the basement of a heavily warded house does

explain why we never managed to find him when we searched for him in the previous restarts. What

was he doing here, anyway?”

“Jornak has been disinclined to cooperate with us in this regard,” Alanic told them. “He refuses to

discuss details with me. He is a lawyer so he is harder to shake up and interrogate than most people

I deal with. That’s why I told you to come here immediately. If you want to get anything out of him,

we need to talk to him now. I’m afraid House Boranova has already heard of the news and is going

to descend here sooner or later.”

Alanic then led them to the second floor of the house, where Jornak was currently under house

arrest with a couple of guards posted next to him. When they arrived they found Jornak pacing

around his room like a caged tiger, angry and agitated. He deliberately ignored their entrance, not

giving them so much as a glance.

Zorian observed the man and the room itself. Jornak was younger than he thought he would be,

probably in his mid-twenties and with a very handsome, boyish face. He was immaculately dressed

in expensive but conservative clothes, and the room he was in seemed to be designed to maximize

his image as a cultured, well-read intellectual. The walls were lined with filled-out book shelves and

small works of art laid scattered around the place to give it a bit of artistic flair.

Zorian’s parents had a similar room back in Cirin. Much like them, Jornak had probably never even

read most of the books lining the bookshelves.

“So, mister Dokochin,” Alanic began. “I’m back. Don’t mind my two helpers here, they’re just here as

support. Now that you’ve had a chance to calm down a little, are you willing to discuss things like a

civilized person?”

Zorian gave Alanic a mildly questioning glance. Was he deliberately pissing the guy off? Jornak did

not look calm at all. Alanic did not react to his silent question though, so Zorian simply trusted him to

know what he was doing. He supposed that with him here, it hardly mattered whether Jornak wanted

to talk or not.

Jornak finally deigned to look at them, giving Zach and Zorian a brief, contemptuous glance before

dismissing them as unimportant.

“Your church really likes them young, doesn’t it, priest?” Jornak said, grimacing at Alanic unhappily.

“I know my rights, mister Zosk. I will not talk to anyone until Mage Guild representatives and my

lawyer arrive. Until then, I will patiently wait here and I’d appreciate it if you stopped wasting my

time.”

“Curious that a lawyer would want someone else to defend them,” Alanic said.

“A surgeon would be foolish to try to operate on himself, and a lawyer is ill advised to represent

himself in court,” Jornak said dismissively. “I would not expect a Church dog to understand these

things. People like you always think you’re above the law, anyway.”

“Hmm,” Alanic hummed, completely unaffected by Jornak’s caustic comments. “I’ll be honest and

say I expected as much. Zorian?”

Zorian did not ask Alanic what he wanted. He already knew. He reached out mentally towards

Jornak. The young lawyer actually had rudimentary mental defenses, but this was not something

that could stop Zorian. He punched through those defenses as if they were paper and pressed down

on the man’s mind.

Jornak’s eyes widened like saucers as he realized what was happening.

“Answer the questions,” Zorian commanded.

“N-no!” Jornak protested. “This… this is illegal! I’ll… damn it. Damn it!”

“Did you kill Veyers?” Zorian asked, just to be sure.

“I didn’t kill him! I didn’t kill anyone! I already said I just found him dead one day! It’s the truth!”

“What was he doing in your home?” Zorian asked.

“That’s… we were friends,” Jornak said, gritting his teeth.

“A friendship between a 15-year-old-boy and a 25-year-old man like you?” Alanic commented lightly.

“Who is it that likes them young, again?”

“You people…” Jornak hissed angrily at him. He took a deep breath and forcibly calmed himself

down. “Look… I promise to tell you the whole story. Just… release me from your mental compulsion.

It’s hard to think with this thing muddying my thoughts.”

Zorian gave Alanic a questioning glance. Alanic nodded for him to do as Jornak said, apparently

willing to give the man a chance. Fair enough. He supposed they could always repeat the procedure

if Jornak became uncooperative later on.

“I’m still keeping an eye on your surface thoughts,” Zorian told him as he released the compulsion to

make him talk. “So don’t try to lie to us.”

“I don’t have to lie!” Jornak snapped at him. “This whole thing is just… damn it, Veyers! Even when

dead, he still makes trouble for me.”

“Yeah, he has that effect on people,” Zach said with a sagely nod.

Jornak ignored that comment, gathering his thoughts for a moment.

“Alright,” Jornak said. “So, I met Veyers almost a year ago when he came to talk to me about his

legal options in regards to his… situation… in his House. I empathized with him then. What

happened to him reminded me a little of myself. I too have had my birthright stolen from me.”

“Really?” Zach asked curiously.

“I don’t want to talk about it and I ask you to be merciful and not force me,” Jornak said. “It has

nothing to do with this, and you can find out most of it through public documents. It’s not like I’ve

ever hid my grievances, after all.”

“Just give us the short version,” Alanic said.

Jornak gave him a hateful look, but after glancing at Zorian for a second he decided to humor the

scarred battle-priest anyway.

“In short, I was a relative of a small House that went extinct some time ago. Although not a true

member of the House, I was the closest thing to a descendant and I was supposed to inherit their

wealth and properties… but then a new claimant suddenly appeared, completely out of nowhere,

claiming even closer relations. His proof of his lineage was painfully fake and all the documents

obvious forgeries, but he was better connected than me and in the end, courts assigned everything

to him and left me with nothing.”

“I see,” Alanic said. “And so you saw young Veyers coming to you for help and felt touched by this

young man that was seeing his legacy usurped from him by branch members of his House.”

“Yes, precisely,” Jornak said. “In truth, I couldn’t help him much. Formal Houses like his own are

given a lot of leeway in how they govern themselves internally, and general law is only somewhat

applicable to his situation. Still, the boy seemed to appreciate my advice, and the fact that I cared…

which not many people around him did, if he was to be believed.”

“And him coming to live inside your home…?” Zorian prompted.

“That… you know he was expelled from his school?” Jornak said, frowning. “Well, he didn’t want to

go back to his family after that. After wandering all over the city to cool down, he came over to my

house and begged me to house him for a few days. He said he needed a place to hide for a while and

think about what to do about things. How could I refuse?”

“That’s very generous of you, and I mean that sincerely,” Zorian said. “But how does that lead to his

body being stuffed into your icebox?”

“That… I didn’t know what to do, okay!?” Jornak said, becoming agitated. “I just came into his guest

room one morning to see why he missed breakfast and found him dead. I didn’t know what to do!

Despite all his problems, he was still a noble and House Boranova would never take this lying down.

He died in my home and the wards didn’t register any intruder at all. How would I possibly explain

this? I empathize with the boy, but I don’t want to ruin my life for him! Haven’t I suffered enough!?”

Jornak gritted his teeth and started pulling at his hair in frustration. With a sharp turn, he started

pacing around the room again, gesticulating to himself and muttering under his breath.

It wasn’t an act, as far as Zorian could tell. Jornak had never bothered to reform his mental barriers

after Zorian destroyed them, leaving his thoughts completely unguarded. Everything he said was

truth as he saw it, and he was honestly panicking and unsure what to do.

“So, this could be a dumb question, but why keep Veyers’ body in the icebox in your basement?”

Zach asked suddenly.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Jornak said, still pacing around the room. “If I took it out of the house

to dump somewhere, the trackers hired by House Boranova would find me the moment I stepped out

of my house’s privacy wards. As for destroying it… well, I’ve never destroyed a body before! I mean,

obviously I didn’t! How would I know how to do that? So I put the body on ice while trying to think up

a solution…”

They didn’t find out much from Jornak after that. Although Zorian personally found the man’s choices

to be rather questionable, he was ultimately just a man who found a dead teenager in his guest room

and panicked. If Jornak hadn’t knowingly helped the Cult of the World Dragon so many times in the

past, Zorian would have even felt sorry for the man.

About fifteen minutes after Zach and Zorian left Jornak’s room, another group of Mage Guild

personnel arrived, accompanied by several representatives from Noble House Boranova, and took

over the scene. Alanic informed Zach and Zorian that this marked the end of his involvement with

the case… and thus the end of their ability to examine the house or question the man.

It was just as well, though. The restart was coming to a close, so there was not much time for a

detailed examination. Additionally, it would have been better if they arrived in the man’s house at the

start of the restart, before he had a chance to stuff Veyers’ body in an icebox. And in the next restart,

they would do just that.

Until then, Zach and Zorian agreed to keep speculation about what this meant about Red Robe to a

minimum.

- break -

Despite numerous issues that had cropped up in their search, in the end Zach and Zorian managed

to gather all the ingredients Silverlake needed (or at least claimed she needed) for a soul perception

potion. It took them most of the remaining time to do so, however, and by then the end of the restart

was looming close. Thus, they were somewhat anxious as they waited for Silverlake to finish making

the potion.

“It should work,” Silverlake told them. “I mean, I’ve never actually made that specific potion in my life

and the old witch recipe that describes it is not nearly as clear and precise as the modern recipes

you two are familiar with… but since it’s me making the attempt, it will probably work out fine.”

“Yes, yes, we get it – you’re awesome,” Zach said with a tired nod.

“And don’t you forget it,” Silverlake said shamelessly. “It shouldn’t take long. Gathering the

ingredients is the time-consuming part; the actual potion making could be done in as little as two

hours. You two go play outside while I work. You can practice your pocket dimension creation skills

or something.”

“You have a real gift for finding exceptionally infuriating teachers, Zorian,” Zach told him after they

got out of Silverlake’s earshot.

“Yes, but they tend to be exceptionally capable ones, too,” Zorian countered. He took out a small

box from his jacket pocket and flipped it upside down, allowing a stream of marbles to pour out of the

box and into his waiting palm. A moderately perceptive person would quickly realize that there was

no way all these marbles could fit into such a small box.

“Only 28 marbles?” Zach smirked. “Amateur. I managed to cram 32 of them inside a box like that.”

Zorian gave Zach a suspicious look, but it didn’t seem like his fellow time traveler was lying about

that.

“Damn it,” Zorian grumbled. “All those specialized shaping exercises and I still can’t advance faster

in this field than you do.”

“I have six times more mana than you do and you’re further hampered by the number of

simulacrums you keep around you at all times,” Zach said with a careless shrug. “It’s hard to make

up for such a disadvantage.”

He was right, of course. Truthfully, it was amazing he was able to keep up with Zach’s learning rate

at all. It still made him feel a little annoyed that he lost their informal competition about who would

advance faster in the field of pocket dimension creation.

Oh well – there was still time to catch up. They would be chipping away at the topic for quite a few

restarts after this, and he was confident he had more patience than Zach did…

It ended up taking Silverlake nearly four hours to finish the potion, despite her claim that it could be

done in as little as two hours. She claimed she had merely been waiting for the concoction to cool

down to a comfortable drinking temperature before bringing it over, but Zorian suspected it had more

to do with the process being harder than she’d thought it would be rather than anything considerate

like that.

“You should drink the potion soon,” Silverlake told him. “The instructions were a little fuzzy about its

shelf life and there was a bit of unplanned excitement involved in making it, so I had to add in a little

something to forcibly stabilize it. It should retain its potency for about a week, after which there is a

small but non-trivial chance it might explode in your face. Best not to take that chance, hmm?”

“’Unplanned excitement’, you say,” Zach dead-panned. “That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

“I’m 97.3% sure it will work as expected,” Silverlake said firmly.

There was a small silence as Silverlake looked at them expectantly, no doubt hoping one of them

would ask her why it was 97.3 instead of 99 or something like that. She would be sorely

disappointed. They both knew better than to humor her like that.

“I’m 97.3% sure you pulled that number out of your ass,” Zorian told her bluntly. “But it doesn’t

matter. This month is approaching its end and time will soon reset itself. I’m going to drink this right

away.”

“Ah yes, the great time reset,” Silverlake said. “You’re still going on about that, huh? Well, did I ever

tell you about–”

But Zorian wasn’t listening anymore. He uncapped the potion bottle Silverlake handed to him and

immediately drank the entire potion. The thick green liquid was bitter as hell, but otherwise

unremarkable. For a few seconds, nothing happened…

…and then he experienced a sensation reminiscent of the soul-stealing move he had experienced

when fighting the soulseizer chrysanthemum and his senses rapidly began to dim.

He lost consciousness.

- break -

When Zorian woke up, he found out two days had gone by. They had expected as much, though.

According to what they knew, the process of gaining soul perception through this method always

took at least a day, and could take as many as five. Some unfortunate souls, ignorant of this little

detail, had been known to die of dehydration after drinking a potion like this in secret.

In regards to what had happened while he was unconscious, Zorian had only the fuzziest of

recollections. He had periodically regained awareness throughout the process, but it was like trying

to remember a dream. He remembered a series of senseless, disjoined images: a sea of suns

connected by glowing threads, a massive volcano in the middle of an eruption, a carpet of smoke

crawling across desolate lands…

Just like his usual dreams, in other words. He put it out of his mind, and focused on the important

stuff… like whether he had successfully acquired soul sight or not.

The answer was that he had. It wasn’t as instinctive as Zorian’s mind magic, but Zorian had found a

sufficient amount of instructions in Sudomir’s mind to figure out what he had to do. So long as he

poured mana into his soul in very specific ways, he could ‘see’ the souls of other people. It wasn’t

really sight as such, so much as a whole new sense that gave him headaches when he tried to

process what it was really telling him, but that would improve with time and practice.

Overall, Zorian considered the whole thing to be a massive success. The only problem with the

whole thing was that he had forgotten to mention to Imaya and Kirielle that he would be absent from

home for several days, so Zach had to take the brunt of their ire and convince them not to report his

disappearance to the police. Now all three were kind of annoyed with him…

Currently, Zorian was sort of hiding from them in Silverlake’s pocket dimension. Of course, he did

have a valid reason for being there, beside that – he was trying to find something that would

convince her future self that the time loop is real. Silverlake did have a penchant for telling him little

personal stories from time to time, but it was hard to discern which ones were fake and which ones

real, so he doubted that would help him convince her in the future.

“Did you know I was considered a dangerous radical in my youth?” Silverlake asked him. Zorian

didn’t and told her so. “Oh yes. When I was born, the covens had already been on their last legs –

Ikosian magic had shown itself to be mostly superior to our own spellcasting traditions. After all,

most of our spells are long rituals involving lots of chanting and standing still for hours on end, or

relied upon invoking the spirits of the land – who are notoriously fickle things if you ask me, you can

never rely on them to aid you when you need them the most. The one thing we had going for us –

our potion making – the Ikosians simply copied and then improved upon. I saw all this, and I decided

to commit a huge heresy – I decided to study Ikosian methods in addition to the traditional education

I received from my mother. My coven exiled me for it when they found out.”

“Tragic,” Zorian said. “But that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t really

be surprised if I revealed I knew this little tidbit of your past.”

“No, of course not,” Silverlake said. “I’m sure you could find out that and more if you really decided to

investigate my history. If you came to me and started narrating my past, I’d just think you did your

homework before coming to see me.”

“Right,” Zorian nodded. “So I’d really prefer if you gave me something more substantial. Surely you

have some kind of private password that you could easily tell me without truly inconveniencing

yourself. You can change it immediately after you tell me, so it’s not like there is any danger I’ll

abuse it.”

“Not during this month, no,” Silverlake scoffed. “But what if you’re right? I have no assurance you’ll

only use such a secret to convince my future self of your crazy tale – you could use it just as easily

to rob her blind!”

“But you don’t believe in the time loop?” Zorian tried.

“If I’m going to entertain a stupid hypothetical, I’m not going to do a half-assed job,” Silverlake said,

her tone brooking no argument. “But… hmm. I think I have it. Do you remember how you came in

front of my home and made all that racket to draw my attention?”

“Of course,” Zorian nodded. “It’s one of the best moments of this month.”

Silverlake took a sudden swipe at him with her bony, withered hand, but Zorian successfully dodged

her strike.

“Brat. I should refuse to say anything now, but I don’t want you pestering me about this further,”

Silverlake grumbled. “Anyway, at some point I actually considered the possibility of someone finding

my abode and trying to catch my attention. I was thinking of what would be the proper, polite way of

doing that, and I realized I would probably have to install some kind of doorbell or something. And

that would be kind of incompatible with the whole hidden nature of this place, no?”

“Right,” Zorian agreed. “So the doorbell would have to be hidden too, accessible only to people who

have been told about it in advance.”

“Exactly!” Silverlake said. “Now, in the end, I just scrapped the whole idea. I didn’t want people

visiting the place too casually. However, I did implement part of the system before I gave up. There

is a stone in this place that emits shrill whistles when a special keystone is activated right outside the

entrance to this dimension. These keystones were never actually made, so the whistle stone just sits

there, uselessly gathering dust. I guess there is no harm in showing you how to create a matching

keystone…”

“And that would convince you there’s something funny going on?” Zorian asked.

“Well yes, I guess it would,” Silverlake said. “I mean, I never actually made a single keystone, let

alone distributed them to people. How could you possibly create one that matches perfectly with the

whistle stone in my dimension? If you showed up holding one of those, that would catch my attention

for sure.”

Zorian grinned. He had a feeling their chances of convincing Silverlake in the future had just

dramatically improved…

- break -

One of the more unexpected things about this restart was that Daimen had made a surprise decision

to stay in Cyoria for the last few days of the restart. Zorian was not sure what exactly triggered this

decision. Perhaps it was because Zorian had asked to borrow his divine artifice mirror for a little

research or because his eldest brother had joined them in exploring the ruined palace inside the orb

this time, but he suddenly decided he absolutely must see the invasion that occurs on the night of

the summer festival.

Zorian thought nothing of it at first. Even when Daimen came to Cyoria a few days before the actual

day of the invasion, making a mysterious claim that he had ‘something he needed to do’, Zorian just

dismissed it as him wanting to talk with his old friends or whatever. Then Daimen came to him for

help and Zorian realized he probably should have inquired deeper into what Daimen was doing while

back home in Eldemar.

“No, Daimen,” Zorian told him firmly. “I am not going to set up a meeting between you and Fortov.”

“Come on, Zorian, this is our family at stake here,” Daimen pleaded.

“Oh, please,” Zorian protested. “You and Fortov not getting along with each other is not a crisis.

That’s par for the course in our family. Stop being so melodramatic.”

“Crisis or no, this time loop is perfect for solving things like this, and it will take so little effort, too!

Show some compassion for your big brother and do me a favor, eh?” Daimen insisted. “Haven’t I let

you borrow my mirror when you asked, despite my better judgment? And let’s not forget about that

secret room full of treasure that I found in the ruined palace – it would have taken you months to find

that without me, if you ever did.”

Zorian made a sour face. Yes, Daimen was rather more helpful in this restart than he usually was.

That secret room in particular… they were still sorting through the contents, but it would seem there

were some very nice things hidden there. One of the daggers appeared to be a genuine divine

artifact! They had no idea what it did yet, but even if it turned out to be underwhelming, it would be

extremely valuable as a research subject and priceless trade good.

“Look,” Zorian said. “Using me as a lure so you can basically ambush Fortov out there in the open

really doesn’t sit well with me. Don’t you think that’s kind of a jerk thing to do?”

“I thought you hated Fortov?” Daimen challenged, raising his eyebrow at him.

“I don’t like him, but this sort of manipulative maneuver doesn’t sit well with me,” Zorian said. “Just

go confront him directly, okay? I’m sure he’ll relent if you keep pestering him.”

“No, he won’t,” Daimen said slowly. “Do you think I’d suggest this if that worked? Besides, you’re

looking at this the wrong way. You don’t have to trick him or anything. You said he always seeks you

out at the end of the restart, so long as you don’t avoid him. Something about the cure for the purple

creeper rash, yes?”

“Yes,” Zorian reluctantly admitted. “So you want me to just go somewhere where he can easily reach

and wait for him to show up on his own?”

“Yes,” Daimen nodded. “Since you haven’t asked him to meet with you, he has no right to complain

when it turns out I was in the vicinity.”

“Well… alright,” Zorian sighed. “Though if you have been pestering him these past few days, he

might decide to deviate from his usual pattern. It’s amazing as it is that he always ends up pushing

Ibery into that purple creeper patch. That has got to be a deliberate move on his part…”

“Mm,” Daimen agreed. “I should ask about that too, I guess.”

The final plan was very simple. Zorian would spend the evening walking around the city,

occasionally casting divinations to see if Fortov was approaching. If he was, he would quickly seek

shelter in one of the many coffee shops scattered around Cyoria, under the theory that Fortov was

slightly less likely to start yelling at Daimen in the middle of a crowded coffee shop than in the middle

of the street or whatever. Once Fortov sat down, Daimen would show up to crash the event.

Daimen’s little plot worked perfectly. Fortov did show up, looking for Zorian’s help in procuring an

‘anti-rash potion’. Zorian had already made the necessary salve before coming here, so he just

handed the little jar full of salve to Fortov and sat back to finish the cup of tea he ordered.

Fortov looked down at the cure jar in his hand, fingering it awkwardly, and frowned at him.

“You just… happened to have that very specific cure lying around in your pocket?” Fortov asked

Zorian incredulously. “What the hell, Zorian? Do you carry a whole apothecary with you at all times

or something?”

Well, the way his pocket dimension creation skills were advancing, that might actually be a

possibility in the future.

“I knew you’d be looking for that,” Zorian said. “I spoke to Ibery, after all.”

Fortov’s face twisted in surprise.

“She spoke to you!?” he asked, shocked. “Oh man… why me? Look, I… thank you for this, but–”

“You pushed her into that purple creeper patch deliberately, didn’t you?” Zorian said, not really

asking so much as making an observation.

“It’s not that simple, okay?” Fortov said defensively. “You don’t know what she’s like. I know she

looks quiet and all, but she was being really aggressive and wouldn’t take no for an answer and she

kept trying to kiss me and… I guess I went a little overboard.”

“And a purple creeper patch just happened to be nearby?” Zorian asked. Fortov’s explanation was

great and all, but how did that explain Ibery ending up in in that bush every single time?

“I deliberately took the purple creeper related task when they were distributing class assignments,

because people usually avoid them like a plague. But that didn’t deter her this time. I guess in

retrospect it would have been smarter to take something where lots of other people would be

nearby. At least that would stop her from trying to get physical with me…”

Zorian was going to inquire more about this, but this was the moment that Daimen finally showed up

to crash the meeting. Strange… he actually kind of wished Daimen had taken longer to arrive. The

story was just getting interesting…

“You again!” Fortov hissed, giving Daimen an angry glare. “Why can’t you take the hint!? And how

the hell are you even here? I thought you were supposed to be in Koth!”

“Please, I just wanted to talk, okay? Why are you being so…”

Zorian leaned back in his chair, taking another sip of his tea, and mentally toned down the volume of

the shouting going around him. So much for the idea that Fortov would hold back because they were

in a public location. But it didn’t matter because this was Daimen’s stage now and there was no need

for him to get involved.

Well, there wasn’t any need for it until both of them decided to pull him into their argument just

because he was there. And because his ‘smug attitude’ pissed them off, apparently.

Sometimes he just couldn’t win.

Chapter 076

Critical Blunder

The evening was a pleasant one, with cool winds blowing through the streets of Cyoria and the

moon shining brightly in the sky. Zorian took it all in, feeling somewhat invigorated by the evening

chill, and thought about life. It was interesting, Zorian mused, that even after all these years spent in

the time loop, some simple experiences had eluded him until now.

Getting thrown out of a coffee shop for disturbing the other customers, for instance, was an entirely

novel experience.

He glanced to the side, where Daimen and Fortov were currently having a tense face-off, staring at

each other with serious expressions. He wasn’t even angry, in all honesty. Yes, being ejected out of

the building was mildly embarrassing, but it didn’t bother him all that much. What did bother him was

that even after causing such a commotion, they still failed to even establish what the problem was.

Honestly, these two…

“Fortov, look…” Zorian began cautiously, “I understand you being mad at Daimen but you’re only

shooting yourself in the foot here. The reason Daimen sought you out is because he wants to know

why you’re angry with him. If you want to get rid of him, just tell him what your problem with him is

and he’ll go away. Well, probably.”

“Don’t you start,” Fortov said, giving him a suspicious frown. “You helped him set this up, didn’t

you?”

“I didn’t ask you to seek me out,” Zorian pointed out calmly. “You decided that on your own. And

nobody forced you to stay around and argue with Daimen, either. You already have the salve you

came for, no? You could have just picked yourself up and left the moment Daimen showed up.

That’s what I’d have done in your place. The fact that you stayed around means you do want Daimen

to know why you’re angry after all.”

For a second, Fortov just stared at him, a stony expression on his face. It was a somewhat alien look

on the normally amiable Fortov.

“I so want to punch you in the face right now, you smug asshole,” Fortov eventually said. “But I

suppose there is something to that logic, so I’ll restrain myself.”

“Finally,” Daimen mumbled, just loud enough for both of them to hear him. “All this dancing around

and refusing to say what’s bothering you, I almost thought you had turned into a woman while I

wasn’t looking.”

Fortov glared furiously at him, to which Daimen reacted only by rolling his eyes. Thankfully, the

shouting didn’t start up again. It seemed that Fortov had gotten his anger out of his system a bit.

“Right, now, just before the nice waitress asked us to leave the premises, I believe you were saying

something about your problems with the academy being Daimen’s fault?” Zorian prompted. It was in

his best interest to help Daimen get his answer now, or else the man would no doubt make more

annoying plots like this one in upcoming restarts.

“Which is ridiculous,” Daimen butted in. “We barely even interacted with each other by the time

Fortov started attending the Academy in Cyoria.”

“Yes!” Fortov said, pointing his index finger at Daimen with a stabbing motion. Then he repeated the

gesture for emphasis. “Yes, that’s exactly my problem! We barely interacted at all!”

“What?” Daimen asked uncomprehendingly.

“You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” Fortov said, more as a statement of fact than a

question. “I think that’s what pisses me off the most about this. You don’t even remember! You’ve

completely forgotten all about your promise!”

“Wha- What promise?” Daimen fumbled.

“You were supposed to help me!” Fortov burst out, pointing at Daimen again and then hitting himself

in the chest with a closed fist to indicate himself. “Remember? I came to you before enrolling here

and asked you if I could count on you to support me when I run into troubles at the Academy, and

you said yes… you said I could always come to you for help if I needed it and that it’s no issue, no

issue at all…”

Daimen visibly winced at those words.

“Oh,” he said weakly. “That.”

“Yes, that,” Fortov said sullenly. “I was such a fool to actually trust you on that. What good is a

promise like that when you’re always busy with something, always unreachable and brushing me off

when you’re not? You probably forgot about that promise the moment you made it… if you ever took

it seriously at all.”

“I made that promise in good faith,” Daimen protested. “It’s just that I had some professional

opportunities come up afterwards that were too good to let go. Don’t you think it’s kind of

unreasonable of you to expect me to sabotage my career just to help you with schoolwork? I mean,

you could have always just asked Zorian for help instead and…”

Both Fortov and Zorian gave him a glare for that. Daimen considered his words for a moment and

then mumbled something that was either a quick prayer to the gods or a colorful curse before

dropping the idea and moving on.

“Anyway, moving on,” Daimen said, coughing into his fist. “I guess I kind of did fail you there. I do

admit that. However, to say that makes me responsible for your academy problems, that’s still

rubbish. Let’s be honest here Fortov… me helping you out every once in a while wouldn’t have made

much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be ‘every once in a while’, you jerk…” Fortov protested.

Zorian stood off to the side, shaking his head as the two continued to argue. As minutes ticked by, it

became obvious that this promise thing meant completely different things to Fortov than it did to

Daimen. Fortov, it turned out, had understood Daimen’s promise as a commitment to a much

heavier form of support. Though Fortov did not phrase things that way, Zorian understood his middle

brother’s explanations for what they were: an admission that he expected to be carried along

throughout his entire education on Daimen’s coattails. Daimen, on the other hand, probably made

that promise without much thought put into it, thinking it a mere formality. He evidently expected that

Fortov would come seek him out once every few months to ask a question or two and talk about girls

and life and stuff.

Amusingly enough, he ended up not even getting that in the end…

“Can’t you see you’re being completely unreasonable?” Daimen said, gesticulating wildly. “Do you

even hear what you’re saying? You basically expected me to do half of your work for you. That’s

completely ridiculous!”

“He’s right, it is,” added Zorian, nodding sagely.

“I was just describing an ideal case, I would have been happy with even a fraction of it,” Fortov shot

back. “And it doesn’t matter because in the end I got nothing at all! You gave me a promise and then

you forgot you’d ever made it. That’s a jerk thing to do, no matter how you try to spin it.”

“He’s right, it is,” added Zorian, nodding sagely.

“Shut up, Zorian!” they both said in perfect synchronization.

Zorian pretended to stagger back from the outburst and mimicked clamping his mouth shut.

As for Daimen and Fortov, the two of them shared an uncertain look between each other before

quietly deciding to calm down a little and take a step back. Zorian would have liked to claim that this

was his plan all along, but truthfully he was just messing with them for his own amusement.

“But seriously, you’re being kind of crazy here,” Daimen said to Fortov again, a little more sedately

this time. “I get that you’re having problems with your studies, but–”

“Man, you just don’t understand,” Fortov complained, cutting him off. “This city, this academy… it’s

out of my league. I know this. I’ve always known this. I know my limits. I’m not as smart as you and

Zorian...”

“You’re plenty smart, Fortov,” Zorian cut in. “You’re just lazy.”

Fortov didn’t even try to refute him, but Daimen gave him a sidelong glance.

“I thought you were going to keep quiet?” Daimen asked.

“I lied,” Zorian said with a careless shrug.

“Whatever,” Fortov said, exhaling heavily. “I’m not as good as you two. Happy now?” Zorian made a

circular motion with his hand, signaling him to keep going. “Anyway, my point was that I only agreed

to enroll here because Daimen said he would support me. If I had known I would have to do this

alone, I would have told Mother and Father to enroll me somewhere else. Somewhere less…

prestigious. But they pushed hard for this, saying what an opportunity this is and I thought… well, at

least I’ll have my genius older brother there to help me sort things out…”

Zorian didn’t say anything after that, quietly waiting by the side and letting the two of them talk. He

didn’t feel much compassion for Fortov’s plight. Daimen may have a cause for feeling a little guilty

about how things turned out, but all Zorian saw was the same old Fortov he’d known from his

childhood – a lazy, shallow asshole constantly looking for ways to shift his own responsibilities onto

people around him. He was darkly amused when the two of them eventually decided to just take a

step back and have another meeting in a week or so… something that would never happen, and

Daimen damn well knew so.

Oh well, it wasn’t really Zorian’s problem. That is, until Fortov left the scene and Daimen tried

to make it his problem…

“No, Daimen, I am not going to delve into the hows and whys of Fortov’s failures and assemble a

tutoring program for him,” Zorian bluntly told him.

“Why not? You do for Kirielle and even that female friend of yours,” Daimen said. “He’s your brother,

Zorian.”

“Sorry, but you can’t guilt-trip me into doing this. Mother’s antics have made me completely immune

to guilt-trips,” Zorian said dispassionately. “I am sick and tired of having to pick up after Fortov’s

failures time and time again. How about you do it for once in your life? You’re the one who made a

promise that you failed to keep, no? Don’t you think it’s in poor taste to try fobbing this off on me so

quickly after your little heart-to-heart with Fortov?”

“The restart is just about to end, when else am I going to talk to you about this if not now?” Daimen

protested. “And I don’t retain memories over the restarts like you do, that’s why I can’t do it.”

“But you can leave yourself notes at the end of each restart and work on the problem that way,”

Zorian countered. “You are doing that very thing in order to figure out how to get Mother and Father

to accept your marriage to Orissa, so I don’t see why you can’t apply it here too.”

Daimen frowned, either because he did not like the idea or because he was reminded of how utterly

he had failed in his task of convincing them thus far.

“He’s your brother, Daimen,” Zorian said, flinging his words back at him.

“Ugh,” Daimen grumbled. “You can be such a little shit sometimes… Fine, you win. I guess it has to

be me. But I’ll need you to do me a small favor…”

- break -

One restart ended and a new one began. At the start of the new restart, Zach and Zorian

immediately invaded Jornak’s home, knocking him out, kidnapping him and searching his home.

They found Veyers dead in the guest room, just like Jornak’s story in the previous restart suggested

they would. Using his brand new soul perception and a couple of soul magic forensic spells he had

stolen from Sudomir’s mind (unsurprisingly, necromancers had a very developed tradition of analytic

spells meant to be used on corpses), Zorian determined that Veyers was in a virtually identical

situation as the soul-killed aranea beneath Cyoria.

Normally, when one’s soul was ripped out of their body, there would be subtle signs left etched into

the flesh of the deceased, and these could be used to infer the method of extraction used. Neither

the aranea nor Veyers showed such traces, though – it was as if they were merely flesh puppets that

had never held any life to begin with.

They had expected such a result, but it was nice to have things confirmed so clearly.

After examining Veyers’ body, they moved on to Jornak. Zorian had expected the young lawyer to be

absolutely livid at them, but the way they just barged into his home and brutally subdued him must

have clued him in to the fact they weren’t here on behalf of regular law enforcement. Or maybe it

was their age – Zorian sometimes forgot to account for that little detail, as he felt pretty old these

days, but he and Zach still looked like teenagers. Jornak was thus a lot more subdued this time

around, too terrified about what they wanted to do with him to put up much of a resistance. Sadly,

interrogating him with the aid of truth potions and mind magic yielded very little of note. Everything

was mostly as Jornak had said in the previous restart, except that Veyers was also something of an

informant for the young lawyer in addition to being a ‘friend’ – he basically reported anything

interesting that occurred in his House to Jornak, who then forwarded the information to the Cult of

the World Dragon. Thus, Veyers was something of an unwitting low-level spy for the Cult.

Finally, Zach and Zorian sat down one day to discuss their findings and what they meant regarding

the identity of Red Robe.

“So,” Zach began, “we’ve confirmed that Veyers is either Red Robe or connected to him in some

fashion. His body is clearly just a meat puppet that never held a soul to begin with, just like the

bodies of your aranean friends beneath the city. Either he was somehow connected to Red Robe

and the man decided to use soulkill on him, or he is Red Robe and this is what happens to a

controller’s body when they leave the time loop. Is that about right?”

“It is,” Zorian confirmed. “Additionally, the fact Red Robe saw fit to delete your memories of Veyers

reinforces his importance. We haven’t been able to find anyone else whose entire presence had

been scoured from your mind, so whatever link he has to Red Robe isn’t small.”

“He also has a reason to be bitter at the city and a link to the Invasion, however tenuous,” Zach

added. “Yeah, he could totally be Red Robe. Even his height and build matches what I remember of

him when he attacked me at the start of that one restart…”

“Sadly, that is not real proof of anything,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “At the level of skill we are

working at, that sort of thing is trivially easy to fake. All it takes is a quick transformation spell and

you could radically change your height and build.”

“Well, he did attack me at the very start of the restart when he was undoubtedly in a hurry and didn’t

have much time to make detailed preparations. Maybe it slipped his mind? You have a better

memory than I do and you saw him up close… how does the Red Robe in your mind compare to

Veyers?”

Zorian considered it carefully. After a while he decided that Zach was right – Veyers did have the

appropriate height and build to be the Red Robe in his memories.

“It is as you say,” Zorian said slowly. “He does kind of fit under that robe. But really, in order to get to

the bottom of this, we need to find out what happens when a controller leaves the time loop. This

should tell us whether Veyers is just a soulkilled victim or the very mastermind we are looking for.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Zach complained. “That stupid Guardian of the Threshold

thing refuses to entertain hypotheticals like that. We already asked it what happens in this scenario,

remember? It simply insisted that no such thing could transpire. Besides, we still don’t know what

method Red Robe used to leave. If he’s a later addition to the time loop like you assume he is, he

couldn’t have used the normal method to do so. He would have run into the problem of his original

already having a soul, which should have led to the Guardian refusing to cooperate. Depending on

what method Red Robe used to leave the time loop, the answer to the question of what would

happen to his body might radically change…”

“Not necessarily,” Zorian said. “One thing that always stuck with me about Red Robe is that he

honestly seemed concerned about the possibility of there being a large number of other time

travelers involved in the time loop. That means that he knew of a very easy and reliable way of

inducing people in the time loop and thought it was entirely plausible that someone was using it on a

mass scale.”

“He did seem quite certain that there were a lot of other time travelers lurking around,” Zach said,

frowning. “My memory of that time is not the best, but that did appear to be the main thing he sought

answers about when he probed my mind that night…”

“Right,” Zorian said. “And this method couldn’t have been the same as what I went through, because

what happened to me is highly dangerous to the marker donor and probably doesn’t give consistent

results. It also couldn’t have been something that is hard to set up, or else Red Robe wouldn’t have

accepted it happening so readily and on such a large scale...”

“So what is it then?” Zach asked impatiently. “I’m guessing you have some sort of answer, or else

you wouldn’t be mentioning it. Don’t try to re-enact those cheap detective novels with me, please. I

always found the long reveals in those books to be really annoying…”

“Fine, I’ll be blunt,” Zorian sighed. Killjoy. “I think Red Robe was simply using a modified temporary

marker to persist in the time loop. Sure, they’re supposed to last only six months, but that’s probably

just an extra restriction rather than something inherent in the marker itself. And my own marker

demonstrates quite clearly that these markers can be damaged. Perhaps selectively damaged,

allowing people to remove some of the functions.”

“There have to be some protections against that,” Zach frowned. “I doubt that the makers of the

system would just allow people to tinker with their work like that.”

“Possibly,” Zorian conceded. “Not having seen any temporary marker yet, I can offer little except

baseless speculation. But still, this seems to me like the most likely and straightforward way for Red

Robe to enter the time loop.”

Zach considered his words for a while before giving it a careless shrug and focusing his attention

back to Zorian.

“Well… alright,” Zach shrugged. “Let’s assume you’re right. So what? How does that relate to what

we were talking about?”

“Well, the temporary markers are supposed to be temporary,” Zorian said. “There is probably a clear

course of action meant to be done when they run out and the person they were supporting…

disappears. And this course of action will probably be performed even if the person disappears

prematurely through some other method.”

“Oh!” Zach said, slapping himself in the forehead. “Of course! So if Red Robe entered the time loop

through a ‘selectively damaged’ temporary marker, all we have to do to find out what would happen

after he leaves… is place a temporary marker on someone and see what happens after it runs out.”

“Exactly,” Zorian nodded.

A brief silence descended on the scene.

“You know,” Zach began after a while, “I’m pretty sure we already know the answer to that question.

It probably just recreates a person from its usual template, as if they were never a temporary looper

to begin with. I have no proof of this, but it intuitively makes sense to me.”

“You are probably correct,” Zorian nodded. “I also have no proof, but it is consistent with the intent of

the time loop as the training simulation to set things up in that fashion.”

“Which would mean that Veyers isn’t Red Robe,” Zach continued with that line of thought. “Red

Robe should have ended up as a normal person with no memory of his time looping self, not a

soulless corpse.”

“If he really did enter the time loop via a modified temporary marker, that is probably the case,”

Zorian nodded.

“Hmm,” Zach hummed thoughtfully, tapping his fingers against his chin. “So let’s assume for a

moment that Veyers is just a broken link. I still think he’s the most likely candidate for Red Robe, but

whatever – your theory does sound rather plausible. Who is Veyers linked to? Jornak? Is he Red

Robe?”

“He could be, I guess,” Zorian said uncertainly. “I mean, I see no real evidence for that, and the man

is not very impressive…”

“We weren’t very impressive before the time loop happened to us, either,” Zach pointed out.

“True,” Zorian said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible for Jornak to be Red Robe, just that I see no real

evidence for the idea.”

“Did Veyers have any other friends and associates other than Jornak?” Zach asked.

“I think he did, but Jornak did not know who these people were,” Zorian said. “Veyers didn’t like to

talk about his personal life and Jornak didn’t pry into it too much. The fact that Veyers chose to take

shelter in Jornak’s place might be artificially skewing our perception of how close they were – they

weren’t really that close. Jornak was actually quite surprised when Veyers came knocking on his

door with a plea to let him stay for a while, and even contemplated refusing.”

They discussed things for another hour or so before deciding to shelve the discussion for now. They

would be interrogating Jornak in more detail in upcoming days, which would hopefully shed more

light on the issue. They also intended to use pieces of Veyers’ body as divination tools to try and

track his movement while he was alive. They would have to do this very, very carefully though, lest

they get tracked down themselves by the Boranova House investigators.

Eventually the two of them retired into one of the quieter, less frequented taverns on the outskirts of

the city and sat down to have a drink and talk about less serious topics. The waitress gave Zorian a

really weird look when he ordered fruit juice instead of anything alcoholic and Zach mocked him for

it, but Zorian wasn’t really bothered about that. Instead he decided to make use of this opportunity to

complain about the family drama that Daimen forced him to participate in near the end of the

previous restart.

“Oh man, your family is such a train wreck,” Zach laughed. “It’s not even funny, except it kind of is.

Though I have to admit, I kind of get the urge to defend Fortov when you explain his situation like

that. I mean, I understand why you feel the way you do, but us fuck-ups needs to look out for each

other, you know?”

“What do you– Oh yeah, you were kind of doing badly in the Academy yourself, weren’t you?” Zorian

suddenly realized. He winced. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, it’s fine,” Zach said, shaking his head. “I’m not insulted. Much like Fortov, I too had excuses for

my poor performance. But I understand now that they were just that: excuses. Perhaps Fortov will

eventually learn his lesson as well, eh?”

“Perhaps,” Zorian agreed diplomatically.

Zach responded by taking a deep sip out of his beer keg and then leaned back in his chair in

contentment.

“You know, every time I think about what my future would have been like if I never got pulled into this

time loop thing, I get both furious and horrified,” Zach said, staring at the ceiling of the tavern with

unfocused eyes. “It’s been so long but I remember what it was like so very vividly… How I lived in an

empty, half-abandoned house, constantly hearing about how I was expected to rebuild my entire

House from scratch and feeling utterly lost as to how I can accomplish it. How I eventually decided it

was a hopeless task and began to coast by on the least amount of effort I could get away with and

just tried to keep myself happy. But hey, it was fine! I had plenty of money! I mean, that was why

Tesen fired all the servants and sold off all our properties, right? So it doesn’t matter if I don’t do too

well at the academy and have no real professional skills. Everything will work out… just… fine!”

Zach suddenly finished off his beer keg and then slammed it violently onto the cheap wooden table.

The tavern workers all turned towards them, and for a moment Zorian thought he would be thrown

out of a building for the second time in two restarts, but in the end they just shook their heads slightly

and went about their work. Evidently this was not a rare occurrence around here.

“I’m getting angry again,” Zach explained unnecessarily. “I shouldn’t be talking about this while

drinking.”

Zorian scratched his cheek awkwardly, not sure how to respond to that. He was really regretting

starting the topic about Fortov now…

“You know what the problem with teaming up with you is?” Zach asked him suddenly, staring intently

into his eyes. He didn’t wait for his answer. “I can’t start a restart by beating Tesen into a bloody pulp

anymore. I used to do that every once in a while to work out my frustrations.”

Zorian remembered that. It used to occur quite frequently, leading up to a lot of speculation about

Zach and his reasons for doing that…

“It’s probably for the best you stopped doing that,” Zorian told him. “You might develop unhealthy

habits and end up becoming a fugitive for no good reason once we’re out of the time loop. That

would be a pretty sad way for all this to end, no?”

“I guess,” Zach said. “But it was so satisfying…”

Zach eyed his keg for a couple of seconds, as if considering if he should get himself another, before

sighing and pushing it to the side. Good. He’d rather not deal with a drunk Zach right now.

“What do you intend to do about Tesen, anyway?” Zorian asked. “When we get out of the time loop, I

mean.”

“What else? I’m going to sue him into oblivion,” Zach said. “He may be powerful and well connected,

but I still have some friends in high places and he was pretty brazen in his actions. He broke the law

when he robbed me of my inheritance and I’ll do my best to make him pay for it through official

channels. If that doesn’t work… well, I hope it doesn’t get to that.”

“I see,” Zorian said. “I didn’t see you do any research on the topic thus far…”

“I’ve already done all the preparations a long time ago,” Zach said. “I have all the evidence I need, I

know how to blindside him when putting things into motion and I can afford to hire the best damn

lawyers in the country to represent me. There is nothing more that can be done within the confines

of the restart. These kind of legal cases take years of legal wrangling, not weeks. Still, a strong start

does count for a lot and all the lawyers I spoke with tell me I have a good chance of winning.”

“That’s good,” Zorian nodded slowly. “Though I have a suspicion Tesen and his faction won’t limit

themselves to mere legal wrangling in their attempts to deal with you.”

“I know,” Zach grinned. “But you know me. I don’t shy away from danger. Let them come. It will just

give me a stronger case when it turns up what they’ve been up to.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Zorian asked.

“Probably not, actually,” Zach said, shaking his head. “This is mostly a job for lawyers, not for the

likes of us. Once I put things into motion, I just need to keep the money flowing and ward off any

assassination attempts and the like. But we’ll see. Rest assured I will not be too shy to ask for help

from my fellow time traveler.”

The conversation wound down after that, and they each went their separate ways for the day. The

upcoming days were going to be somewhat busy ones, involving a great deal of preparations and

planning.

It was time to visit Silverlake again… and this time they planned to seriously try and convince her

that the time loop is real.

- break -

When Zach and Zorian showed at Silverlake’s hidden base, they came carrying the grey hunter’s

egg sack and the ancient giant salamander that Silverlake was looking for. The eggs were acquired

in the exact same way they had been in the previous restart. As for the salamander, they just went to

the same place Zorian had found it in the past and then started their search from there. Eventually,

after two whole days of searching up and down the river and examining nearby hiding places, they

found the giant salamander buried in the mud of one of the flooded caverns, almost undetectable if

one didn’t know what to look for. Without an appropriate starting point, it would have taken them

forever to track it down.

But no matter, the point was that they had both of the ingredients that Silverlake wanted so badly for

her youth potion, and Zorian had created the keystone that Silverlake had shown him how to make

in the previous restart. They also loaded up a bunch of combat golems into the portable palace orb,

ready to be taken out at a moment’s notice, just in case Silverlake reacted badly to their approach…

something that was entirely possible, but unavoidable. They didn’t have the time to take things

slowly anymore.

“I’m ready,” Zach said, twirling a combat staff in his fingers to pass the time. “Go ahead and ring the

bell.”

Zorian nodded and activated the keystone in his hands. Nothing visible happened, but Zorian was

sure he had performed the action correctly. Now they could only wait.

They had to wait a surprisingly long time, longer than they had to the last time they had come here.

Zorian suspected this was because Silverlake was studying them from inside before deciding to

come out, and this time they had come more heavily armed and visibly dangerous. Eventually,

however, she decided to greet them anyway. The fact that Zach had gotten bored at some point and

started building a giant statue of himself via alteration spells right outside her home might have

motivated her to hurry up.

“How the hell did you activate that old piece of junk?” She immediately demanded, squinting at each

of them suspiciously. “I never gave anyone a matching keystone. Hell, I never even made any

matching keystones. Suspicious. Very, very suspicious. Who are you two?”

“To answer your last question, I am Zach Noveda and this is Zorian Kazinski. We are but humble

academy students coming here to pay our respects to a living legend,” Zach flattered shamelessly.

Silverlake snorted derisively at him, saying nothing. “And also to arrange for a trade, I guess. Or

should I say… re-negotiate our existing one? After all, this is the second time we’re meeting like

this.”

“I don’t think so?” Silverlake said curiously. “I don’t remember you. I may be old, but I’m pretty sure

I’d never forget a couple of brats as brazen as you two. I mean, I kind of like that kind of attitude, but

only when it’s directed at other people…”

“That’s just because your memory of our meeting has been wiped clean from your mind,” Zorian said

in a carefree manner. “Nothing to worry about. Anyway, here is a gift.”

Zorian reached into his backpack and withdrew a bottle of brandy and a box of sweets from it, which

he then handed to a surprised Silverlake. She made no move to claim them, looking at both objects

like they were poisonous vipers.

“A gift?” she asked emotionlessly.

“It is customary to bring gifts when visiting someone,” Zorian said sagely. “It’s an important tradition.”

Silverlake made a sour face at that explanation. She spent a few more seconds scrutinizing the two

objects before finally deciding they were probably harmless. She took them both from his hands and

immediately stuffed them into one of her jacket pockets. Even though the heavy bottle and the large

box of sweets shouldn’t have possibly been able to fit into that tiny jacket pocket, they somehow did.

What a casual use of pocket dimension creation… Zorian couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. He

wouldn’t be able to duplicate that feat, and in fact didn’t even know how to go about achieving it. He

could only extend the space of rigid containers right now, and had no idea how to use something as

flexible as a pocket as a base for a pocket dimension. He knew it was unreasonable to expect to be

as good as Silverlake after only a month of instruction, but this was a pretty stark reminder of how far

he had to go to match the old witch’s expertise in that regard.

Silverlake grinned at him in triumph, savoring this little victory for all it was worth.

“Let’s back up a bit, shall we?” she asked, a little more confident this time. “You said something

about my memory being wiped?”

“Yes,” Zach nodded. “You see, about a month ago we came to you with a certain offer…”

And Zach started giving Silverlake the summarized version of what happened in the previous restart,

though they took pains to temporarily omit any mention of the time loop itself. They figured it would

immediately make Silverlake disbelieve anything else they had to say if they started with that.

Instead they just narrated the general terms of their deal and the way she had instructed them in the

art of pocket dimension creation and occasionally sent them on random errands.

And they used plenty of props in their explanation. When they spoke of how they offered the

previous version of Silverlake grey hunter’s eggs, they took the eggs they obtained in this restart out

of the portable palace orb and showed them to her. When they spoke of how Silverlake told them

she also needed an ancient giant salamander to complete her youth potion, they took out the living

salamander they captured and showed it off as well.

Silverlake’s eyes shone brightly when she saw the two alchemical ingredients she wanted the most

laid out in front of her, but she remained silent and motionless as she listened to their story in a rapt

manner.

When it came time to move the story into Silverlake’s home dimension, though, her expression fell

and turned grave. This was because Zorian started using illusionary scenes from his memory to

illustrate his points. Normally these kinds of illusory images weren’t worth much as a proof. After all,

nothing stopped the illusionist from fabricating things, and people’s memories tended to be kind of

fuzzy in even the best of cases. However, Zorian had the ability to remember a scene down to the

tiniest detail and it wasn’t like one could randomly invent a detailed layout of Silverlake’s dimension

and be correct. He could replicate the image of her favorite cauldron down to the tiniest scratch and

replicate the exact number of dried onions and mushrooms hanging from the hooks on her wall. It

was a pretty damning proof that he had at least been there at some point, even if he wasn’t telling

the truth about anything else, and Silverlake clearly knew it.

“Stop, stop,” she suddenly told him, waving her hand in a forceful manner. She looked honestly

shaken at the sight of these images. “I… I need to check something.”

Zach and Zorian stood by the side while Silverlake started casting one diagnostic spell after another

on herself. Occasionally she would stop and mutter to herself in some alien Khusky tongue that

neither Zach nor Zorian had ever encountered, before shaking her head and continuing with her self-

diagnostics.

After that she started examining the entrance to her dimension before wordlessly disappearing

inside. Zach and Zorian still waited patiently, not saying anything. She returned twenty minutes later,

looking more disturbed than ever.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she loudly proclaimed. “None of this makes sense. My memory is fine. It

hasn’t been tampered with. I know it hasn’t, because there are always, always traces left when one

does so and my mind doesn’t have any. But you’ve clearly been inside my home long enough to dig

up that old stone and puzzle out a matching keystone for it, long enough to memorize every corner

of it down to the smallest detail. Except there is no trace of illegal entry, not even the faintest whiff of

it, and there is no way in all the hells and all the heavens I’d ever forget letting someone like you

inside. And your story! What a bunch of rubbish! You say you sold me grey hunter’s eggs a whole

month ago, yet I see no evidence I’ve ever processed them! And now you come here with a new

sack of grey hunter’s eggs, as if those can be acquired just by going into your neighborhood store or

something. Who are you people and what is happening here!?”

She punctuated her statement by making a sweeping hand gesture, causing two huge, hulking

humanoids of earth to suddenly coalesce out of the soil around them.

Earth elementals, and not minor ones either. However…

“Should we…?” Zach mouthed.

Zorian quietly nodded and made a sweeping gesture of his own, though his one was mostly for

show, not because he actually needed to make it. Then again, maybe it was the same for Silverlake.

In any case, he made use of the time needed to make the gesture to reach out into the ever-useful

orb, causing a bunch of equally huge and hulking war golems to pop into existence next to them.

“We don’t want to fight,” Zorian said. “But if you really insist on it, I guarantee you it won’t end in your

favor.”

Rather than answer him, Silverlake stomped her foot on the ground, causing a set of heavy, potent

wards to radiate out of the entrance to her pocket dimensions. The warding scheme quickly

enclosed the entire area, shutting down their teleportation, filling the area with fog, inhibiting their

shaping skills, disturbing their souls…

Even as Silverlake was making her move, though, Zorian was doing the same. He quickly reached

into his backpack again and retrieved from it a truncated pyramid made out of glittering blue stone.

He threw it in front of him, and it promptly righted itself in the air and began to hover there, golden

lines and glyphs suddenly appearing on its surface. In a blink of an eye, it had enclosed Zach, Zorian

and their war golems under a dome of yellow light.

Silverlake’s wards crashed into the dome… and were immediately halted in their tracks. The old

witch was way better than Zorian in a number of fields, but her skill at setting up wards wasn’t one of

them. Not to mention that wards were always more effective as a means of defense than they were

as an offensive tool.

There was a tense silence as the two sides stared at each other from behind their respective

barriers. After about a minute of this, Silverlake suddenly sighed and commanded the earth

elementals to merge back into the earth and the wards to retreat back into her pocket dimension.

After a second of hesitation, Zach and Zorian similarly put away their own defenses.

“Well…” Silverlake said, sounding surprisingly chirpy and relaxed. She chuckled at their wary

postures and serious faces. “I really suffered a loss this time, didn’t I? I guess this is what I get for

trying to escalate things into combat. I was never that much of a fighter, truth be told. I don’t suppose

we could all forget this ever happened, hmm?”

“Sure, let’s,” Zach said, giving her a friendly grin. “It’s probably for the best if this never happens

again, though. I only ever give people two chances.”

“Oh?” Silverlake said, cocking her head sideways like a curious bird. “Oh, I see. Everything I’ve been

met with thus far is your friend’s work, but he isn’t actually the combat specialist. You are. And you

never even made a move thus far…” She shook her head, speaking to herself self-depreciatingly.

“Silly old girl, making such blunders at your age… it’s just as they say: you learn all your life and still

die a fool. Though there should hopefully be no dying for me just yet…”

“In any case,” said Zorian, coughing into his fist to attract her attention, “I believe I have an answer

for the concerns you expressed just before this… unpleasantness. You were wondering how this

was all possible, yes?”

“Yes,” she bluntly confirmed. “I’m very curious as to how this could happen.”

“It’s like this,” said Zorian, creating another illusory scene, this one depicting the planet they lived on,

spinning placidly in the air. “There is an artifact from the Age of Gods that can take our entire world,

take a snapshot of every single thing in existence and create a flawless copy of it in a giant pocket

dimension…”

Surprisingly, after Zorian had gotten about halfway into the story, Silverlake suddenly started to ask

a series of rapid-fire questions about the Sovereign Gate, the Guardian of the Threshold, the exact

mechanics of the time loop itself, and so on.

“Alright, you can stop now,” she eventually said, tapping her leg with her bony fingers. “I think I know

what’s going on now. Well, somewhat. And if I’m right, then there is a very easy way to check if

you’re telling the truth or not.”

Zach and Zorian perked up at her words.

“Oh?” Zach asked excitedly.

Silverlake grinned, obviously enjoying the fact that she knew something they didn’t. Or at least

thought she did – Zorian wasn’t going to get excited before he heard what she actually had to say.

For all he knew, she was just trying to patch up her wounded pride.

“Tell me,” she said, “have you two ever heard about the primordials?”

Chapter 077

Testing

Primordials were strange, enigmatic creatures. They were supposedly first-born children of the

primordial dragon from which the world was fashioned, ancient and powerful. In life, their abilities

had rivaled those of the gods themselves. In death, they had spawned a multitude of lesser

primordials to continue their struggle. One would think that such fearsome beings and everything

related to them would be vividly remembered by history, but this was not the case. In his search for

primordial prisons outside Cyoria, Zorian had consulted many church documents, historical records

and elementals, largely in vain. Primordials may have been powerful and frightening in their heyday,

but they had been sealed away thousands of years ago. That was a lot of time for information to be

forgotten, especially since the gods had actively tried to limit knowledge of them and their prisons

while they had still been active in the world. Thus, finding any substantial information on them was

quite hard.

Moreover, even when such information was found, it was hard to gauge how much of it was reliable

and how much of it was pure fabrication. A lot of the stories that bothered going into the details of

the nature of primordials were mutually contradictory, and there was no way to test any of them to

see which one was closer to the truth than the others.

“In other words, you know virtually nothing about primordials except that they exist and that one of

them is imprisoned in Cyoria,” Silverlake concluded after hearing their explanation.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Zach confirmed. Although they were searching for the locations of other

primordial prisons in their free time, that hadn’t produced much in the way of actual results. “What

does this have to do about confirming the truth of our story, though?”

“Patience, boy, patience,” Silverlake urged smugly. “A house must be built from the foundation up. In

order to answer that question, I must first show you the truth about primordials and the way they

were imprisoned…”

Oh? She could actually answer those questions? Zorian was torn between excitement and a healthy

dose of caution. On one hand, this was a powerful witch that has lived through more than a century

– surely she wouldn’t be making claims like that without a good reason to be confident? On the other

hand… well, it was Silverlake.

After some thought, he decided to voice his concerns to the old witch in front of him.

“Ignorant brat,” she complained. “Do you think I’d be joking about something this serious!?”

Zach and Zorian shared a knowing look between each other.

“Well… yeah,” Zach said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Now that you mention it, that does sound like something I would derive dark amusement from,”

Silverlake mused, rubbing her chin with her hand as she stared at the tree branches above her.

“Not exactly something you should be proud of,” Zorian pointed out unhappily.

“Anyway, do you want to hear what I have to say or not?” Silverlake asked loudly, abandoning her

musing pose in favor of folding her hands over her chest and looking at them both defiantly.

“Sure we do,” Zorian said. As annoying as the old witch was, she had some very unique skills and

insights that were almost impossible to find elsewhere. “Let’s hear it.”

Silverlake stayed silent for a few seconds. Before either Zach or Zorian could say anything about

that, the entrance to her secret hideout flared into life again and another Silverlake stepped out of it,

carrying a large brown book in her hands.

Zorian raised an eyebrow at this. Silverlake having some kind of duplicate was not that surprising.

There were lots of spells that duplicated the appearance of a caster in some way, after all. Even if it

was an actual simulacrum, Zorian still wouldn’t find it unusual, since Silverlake was clearly proficient

in soul magic. The really interesting question was which Silverlake was the real thing: the one

they’ve been talking to all this time or the one that had just walked out of her dimensional hideout?

He activated his newly-acquired soul perception and took a look.

It was not easy for Zorian to use his soul perception. Training it had been slow and frustrating thus

far, though he had been told by Alanic that he was doing just fine by normal standards. He’d had the

ability for less than a month, so it was to be expected that his control over it was crude and that he

had trouble interpreting what it was telling him. Zorian imagined this was how non-psychics felt when

they tried to train their non-structured mind magic into something usable.

Still, identifying whether something in front of him had a soul or not was well within his modest

capabilities. With that in mind, he focused his soul perception on Silverlake and immediately realized

that she indeed had a soul. She wasn’t an illusion, a remote-controlled puppet or a simulacrum,

then. So they had actually been talking to the real Silverlake up till now; that was nice to know. Just

to be thorough, he shifted his soul perception to the approaching book-carrying Silverlake and…

She had a soul too. What?

Zorian shifted his attention between one Silverlake and the other repeatedly, trying to work out what

was happening here. It was no use, though – his soul perception simply wasn’t sophisticated enough

to unravel this mystery and he didn’t want to start casting analytical divinations at the old witch and

her weird clone. Blatantly scanning someone without their explicit permission was widely considered

to be rather rude and insulting behavior.

The other Silverlake soon reached the one Zach and Zorian had been talking to and gave her the

book she was carrying. The first Silverlake glanced at the book, nodded slightly and then snapped

her fingers.

The other Silverlake seemingly imploded, badly startling both Zach and Zorian, her form collapsing

into a smoky black ball. The ball existed for only a moment before reforming itself into a large black

bird, which promptly hopped onto Silverlake’s shoulder. It was a raven, Zorian realized.

‘Of course!’ Zorian thought, slapping himself in the forehead. Silverlake had a raven familiar! The link

between a mage and their familiar allowed both of them to assume the form of one another really

easily, provided that the mage knew the proper spells.

And Silverlake no doubt knew the proper spells, because familiar magic was one of the things that

witches were known to be really fond of. Hell, she’d even found the way to shield the raven’s mind

from scrutiny, preventing Zorian from easily identifying it as a shapeshifted animal.

Zorian opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted when Silverlake tried to blow away

the layer of dust on the cover of the book and ended up sending herself into a coughing fit due to all

the dust suddenly flying into her face.

The raven cawed indignantly at this, flapping his wings a couple of times for emphasis.

“Shut up,” Silverlake said to the raven in between her coughing and wheezing. She glanced towards

Zach and Zorian. “And why are you two just standing around like that!? Come closer and take this

blasted thing away already! Who do you think I brought it for? Do you think I wanted to refresh my

memory or something?”

Zorian stepped closer and Silverlake immediately pushed the large leather-bound tome into his

hands. He grunted softly and took a step back, caught off-guard by her sudden movement and the

book’s considerable weight. Damn, this thing was heavy…

“Read this and everything will become clear,” Silverlake said, finally getting her breathing under

control.

Zorian eyed the heavy leather book in his hands suspiciously. The cover was brown and non-

descript, with a title that proclaimed, in plain white letters, that this was a collection of cookie recipes.

Flipping the random pages of the book seemed to reinforce this claim.

He glanced at Silverlake and saw that both she and the raven perched on her shoulder were eying

him closely, waiting for his reaction.

With a small sigh, Zorian swiped his hand across the book and cast an appropriate dispel, shredding

the illusion covering the book into pieces. Following that, he was confronted with a lot less innocuous

title: Unspeakable Cults, Volume Four.

“You just can’t resist pulling these kinds of tricks all the time, can you?” Zorian asked rhetorically.

“You made a lot of tall claims today,” Silverlake shrugged. “It’s only natural for me to test them every

now and then in small ways. If you two are really a bunch of old time travelers like you claim to be, a

simple illusion wouldn’t have posed a problem for you. Besides, I can’t exactly leave a book like this

out in the open without disguising it somehow…”

“What do you mean?” Zach frowned.

“Unspeakable Cults is one of the most widely banned series of books circulating around Altazia and

Xlotic,” Zorian explained, idly leafing through the book. All sorts of ghastly drawings and descriptions

immediately assaulted his eyes. “It was written by an anonymous author that had a penchant for

infiltrating secretive cults and mage organizations so he could observe their ceremonies and

activities. No one is quite sure how he did it, but considering the furor the books created, it’s clear he

didn’t make it all up. Anyway, after infiltrating all these cults and watching them for gods know how

long, he wrote a series of eight books that go into great detail about what he had seen. Every

debauchery he had seen, every messed up sacrifice or morally-bankrupt experiment is described in

great detail, and he even illustrated some scenes with drawings and diagrams. Although the books

contain no actual spells or ritual setups, they have been banned almost everywhere as

blasphemous, degenerate filth.”

He closed the book, eying it in great distaste. He really didn’t want to read this stuff…

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what page I should be looking at?” Zorian asked Silverlake,

staring at her pleadingly.

Silverlake just grinned at him nastily. Damn witch…

Zorian glanced towards Zach speculatively, but the boy immediately shook his head at him before he

could even open his mouth.

“No, no, no,” Zach said quickly, extending his arms in front of him in a warding gesture. “Sorry

Zorian, but this definitely sounds like a job for you. You have a lot higher tolerance for this kind of

stuff than I do.”

Ugh. As much as Zorian hated to admit this, his fellow time traveler kind of had a point. Reading the

minds of high-ranking cultists, Sudomir, Ibasan invaders and others had shown him enough of the

dark side of humanity that he had been numbed to the horror of it all to a large extent.

He still didn’t want to wade into a book like this one, though, so he decided to get a little creative. He

started casting divination after divination spell at the book, trying to divine the section of the book

that Silverlake wanted him to read. This was harder than it sounded, because the book was heavily

warded against divinations and did not ever mention primordials by name, but Zorian was very good

at divinations by now. Especially these kinds of divinations. He’d had his simulacrums in charge of

researching mountains of documentation for obscure clues for quite a while now, so a task like this

was pure routine by this point.

After five minutes or so he found the section that seemed right and flipped the book open. Both

Silverlake and Zach peered over his shoulder to look at the page he had picked.

“You’re no fun, boy,” Silverlake said, scowling at him.

Zorian took that as an admission that he had indeed found the right page to start at and began to

read.

The chapter in question described a small cult of mages, ‘somewhere in Xlotic’, which worshipped

an entity imprisoned behind some kind of ‘dimensional veil’. They did this by capturing unwary

travelers, implanting some sort of magical worms into their brain and then forcibly establishing

contact between their mind and the mind of the imprisoned entity. Normally, mental contact with the

entity resulted in quick insanity as one’s mind was overwhelmed by the flood of incomprehensible

thoughts and images, but the chemicals released by the worms as they fed on the victim’s brain

tissue somehow allowed them to last longer under this assault. Drugged out of their minds to keep

them talking and half-insane, the victims would then spend the next couple of hours screaming,

pleading, cursing and babbling gibberish while the cultists diligently wrote down their feverish ravings

for later study.

After repeating this process gods know how many times, the cultists eventually assembled a fair

amount of information about this entity, which the cultists called ‘the Golden-Feathered Worm’. To

Zorian’s eyes, it appeared clear that this Golden-Feathered Worm was actually an imprisoned

primordial, even if the book never actually identified it as such.

Because of the relatively unpleasant nature of the text, the somewhat archaic language the book

was written in and the unhinged nature of the ‘insights’ obtained by the cultists, it was tempting to

just dismiss all of their findings as delusional gibberish. However, after re-reading the chapter a

handful of times and thinking of it in some detail, he felt there was some actual insight hidden amidst

the insanity. The victim’s mutterings of ‘eyes between spaces’, ‘time that moves in braids and

spirals’, ‘bones that stretched inside and outside’ and other such nonsense all hinted at the idea that

the Golden-Feathered Worm was a very dimensionally complex being.

‘The path of the Golden-Feathered Worm is the path of the self as the universe,’ the book said.

‘Indeed, the rest of his kind is also as such: each one a world unto itself, their flesh but a thin, porous

cloak to hide the depths beneath.’

That was interesting, to say the least. The book was basically saying that primordials were not really

creatures in the way Zorian commonly understood it, but more like living miniature universes. He…

didn’t know what to think about that. It sounded crazy, and considering where it had come from,

Zorian would normally dismiss the idea without a second thought.

He handed the book to Zach, who had given up on trying to read over his shoulder a while ago, but

would probably still want to see what the book had to say. Zorian couldn’t wait to see his face when

he got to the lovingly illustrated description of the worm implantation procedure.

“So?” Silverlake asked, not bothering to wait for Zach to read the book too. “What do you think?”

“I presume you’re referring to the idea of primordials being living universes masquerading as flesh-

and-blood beings?” Zorian asked.

“Wait, really?” Zach asked incredulously, slowly leafing through the book. He was going through it

too fast so Zorian assumed he was only skimming the text instead of meticulously poring over it like

Zorian had done. “How does that work?”

“Read the book and you might get your answer,” Silverlake said blandly. What a lie. Zorian had read

that chapter several times over and he still had no idea how that could possibly work. “But yes, that

is what I was getting at.”

“Great,” Zach said. “But what does that-”

“I think we are living inside a primordial,” Silverlake said.

There was a brief pause as they both digested this statement.

“I think you’re going to have to explain that a little,” Zach said slowly, letting the book hang by his

side for the moment so he can focus on her better.

“Well, provided that what you are saying is at all reliable,” Silverlake said. “You are saying that this

Sovereign Gate thing can copy the entire world and create its very own miniature universe to house

it all. Oh, and run the whole thing at absurd temporal dilation levels. That is not the level of power

you get from a divine artifact. The gods may have been able to build such things, I don’t know, but I

have never heard of them handing out something on this level of power. Surely such a device would

require an absolutely titanic expenditure of divine energy to produce, no? Sounds like a lot of effort

just to give a mortal a new toy to play with. On the other hand, if the Sovereign Gate is ‘just’ a

modified, mutilated primordial… well, suddenly the whole thing becomes a lot more plausible.

Turning one of their ancient enemies into an item like that and handing it down to a measly mortal to

use and abuse sounds exactly like something the gods of old would do. Especially if the primordial in

question had irritated them particularly badly by primordial standards…”

A long silence descended upon the scene as Zach and Zorian considered the plausibility of the

story. Silverlake waited calmly for their reaction, hands clasped behind her back. She appeared to

be trying to project an air of serenity and unshakable confidence with her stance and expression, but

the effect was ruined by the fact she couldn’t stop herself from nervously tapping her foot against the

ground as she waited.

Silverlake could be onto something, Zorian decided. It had always seemed to him that the Sovereign

Gate was ridiculously powerful, even for a divine artifact, and this was as good an explanation as

any as to why this was the case. He suddenly remembered the Ikosian myth of how the entire world

they lived on had been fashioned by the gods out of the body of a defeated primordial dragon. He’d

never taken the old myth very seriously, but maybe there was something to that story…

“You said there might be a very easy way to check if we’re telling the truth or not,” Zach said

cautiously. “Is this related to that? Are you saying it’s somehow possible to check whether we are

inside a primordial or not?”

“Well, perhaps,” Silverlake said, humming softly to herself. “You see, I have known about the

primordial sealed away in Cyoria for quite a while, and have been carefully, carefully studying its

prison from time to time. It was never the focus of my studies, but I reckon I know it quite well. If my

speculation is correct, I should be able to notice some kind of change in the prison when I study it

again. I refuse to believe that being recreated in the body of another primordial will not have a

noticeable effect on it. Well, truthfully, my first instinct is to say that such an item couldn’t possibly

affect beings on the level of primordials, even if they are sealed away… but from what you say about

Panaxeth, I am completely wrong there, so whatever. Anyway, let’s go check!”

“Now?” Zorian asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Is there any point in waiting?” Silverlake challenged.

“I guess not,” Zorian admitted. “I’m just a little surprised at your… decisiveness.”

“I’ve just found out I could be trapped inside the body of a primordial god-like monster that probably

hates all humanity,” Silverlake said, looking like he was an idiot. “Of course I want to confirm or deny

this as soon as I can! Don’t you?”

“A copy trapped inside a body of a primordial god-like monster,” Zorian corrected her.

“And you were preceded by countless other copies that lived out their short lives in vain, all their

thoughts and accomplishments undone at the end of the month,” Zach added.

“A bunch of brats, both of you,” Silverlake told them. “Let’s just take a look at that primordial prison in

Cyoria for now. You two know how to teleport, right?”

“We do, but there is no need for that,” Zorian said. “I have a much better way for us to get there

quickly.”

- break -

After the three of them returned to Cyoria (via Zorian’s dimensional gate spell, of course), they

immediately proceeded towards the place the primordial was imprisoned in – the massive circular

abyss around which the city of Cyoria was built, known simply as the Hole.

Fortunately, accessing the Hole was not terribly hard. Although the incomprehensible amounts of

mana gushing out of it were the foundation upon which the city rested, the Hole itself was not

monitored very closely. The biggest concern the city had about it was that it was rather popular for

people to commit suicide by throwing themselves into its depths, which meant they had to put a

token patrol here and there to try and curb this behavior. These patrols were not very good and only

checked the most obvious approaches to the Hole. So long as they didn’t bring too many people and

avoided making a spectacle out of themselves, they could linger inside as long as they wished.

As they descended into the Hole’s depths, Zach and Zorian questioned Silverlake about her interest

in primordials. Silverlake claimed it was not something she had ever been overly concerned with, it

was just that she had been alive for a long time and even casual study could build up to something

substantial when you keep chipping at the problem over several decades. She also claimed that, like

them, she did not know of any primordial prisons other than the one in Cyoria.

Zorian wasn’t sure he believed her, to be honest. She knew Panaxeth’s prison well enough to give

her confidence that she could detect changes in its dimensional boundary, but she’d only studied it

casually? Zach and Zorian could only faintly detect the presence of the prison and little else, and it

wasn’t like their attainments in the field of dimensionalism and divination were low. Furthermore,

while their search for other sites of primordial imprisonment had yet to bear fruit, they did have no

less than three promising leads already… and that was with them casually directing some efforts at

the problem, rather than dropping everything to pursue the issue. He was supposed to believe that

Silverlake couldn’t manage to find even one additional prison after spending gods know how many

decades of interest in the topic? He had a feeling Silverlake was seriously underselling both her level

of interest in this and her attainments in it. He even suspected that her incredible level of skill in the

field of pocket dimension creation might come from pursuing this line of research.

He did not voice his suspicions, though. He could tell that, although Silverlake was putting forth a

confident façade in front of them, the things they had said had deeply disturbed her and made her

uneasy. If he was too pushy she might feel backed into a corner and lash out. Frankly, she had

never struck him as the most stable of individuals to begin with.

They didn’t have to descend far into the Hole to get access to Panaxeth’s prison. Unlike the palace

orb and other pocket dimensions that Zorian was familiar with, primordial prisons seemed to have

larger and more complex anchors to the main reality that extended over quite a large area. In fact,

considering that Zorian had once witnessed Panaxeth breaking out of his prison in the sky above

Cyoria, he suspected that the anchor extended well outside the Hole itself… it was just that those

parts of the anchor were too subtle for Zach and Zorian to detect them. In any case, once they had

reached sufficient depth, Silverlake asked them to shut up and let her examine the prison in peace.

So they did just that, sitting down on a couple of nearby rocks in silence while Silverlake did her

thing.

Zorian paid close attention to the spells Silverlake was casting. Though one couldn’t learn a spell

just from watching someone cast it, they could get a pretty good idea of what the spell was

supposed to do if they were experienced or familiar with the relevant theory. Zorian was both, so

there was a lot he could tell by watching Silverlake analyze Panaxeth’s prison. She used dozens of

individual spells in her investigation, each one of them a lengthy and complex thing that seemed

narrowly specialized for one specific function. Such unoptimized, hyperspecialized spells were

probably something she had made herself, specifically to tackle the problem of analyzing a

primordial’s prison. Furthermore, she cast these rather unwieldy spells with practiced ease, making

no mistakes whatsoever, strongly suggesting she had done them often enough for it to become rote.

‘Casual interest’, sure…

As time went by, Silverlake’s face started to frown more often and her casting became more

feverish, but she remained completely silent and focused on her task. She didn’t even mutter to

herself, as she was often prone to do. Finally, after more than two hours of casting, pondering and

intense staring at the empty patch of air in front of her (what was that even supposed to do?),

Silverlake let her arms drop to her sides, sighed and then turned towards them.

“Alright,” she said. “You win. I provisionally believe your crazy story.”

“Provisionally?” Zach asked curiously.

“We’re clearly in a different world than we were up until a few months ago,” said Silverlake. “It does

not necessarily mean your specific version of events is what is happening, but I have no better

explanation at the moment. So for now, I’m accepting your story as valid.”

“Just to confirm, you actually detected a noticeable difference between Panaxeth’s prison as it was a

few months back and as it is now?” Zorian asked.

“I suppose you could say that,” Silverlake said, a note of discomfort creeping into her voice.

“Why the glum face?” Zach asked, picking up on her mood. “Didn’t you expect to find just that?”

“I expected to either find that the prison is some kind of poor man’s knockoff of a real primordial’s

prison or that it was thoroughly unchanged from how it was before and that you were trying to feed

me a pack of lies,” Silverlake said.

“But?” Zorian prodded.

“But it’s the same prison as it has always been… just seen from a different perspective,” Silverlake

said, lost in thought for a second. She scowled when she refocused back on them and saw them

looking blankly at her. She clacked her tongue. “Bah! I can’t believe I have to explain myself to a

bunch of amateurs like you… Well, let’s try it like this: you know how a dimensional gate looks like

it’s composed out of two discrete portals but is actually just one dimensional construct with two

ends? The prison in front of us is like that. I can sense the changes in it, but a closer look reveals

they are clearly superficial. It’s the exact same object, just seen through a different lens. Panaxeth’s

prison exists simultaneously in both the real world and… whatever the hell this place really ends up

being. This Sovereign Gate of yours couldn’t duplicate primordial prison grounds, but it could make

them attach themselves to this world in addition to their original one… and it’s giving me a

headache. I don’t know how this could possibly work and I don’t know why someone would bother

with this. Why didn’t this divine toy just neglect the primordial prisons entirely instead of going to all

this trouble to ensure access to them even in a recreation of a real world? Argh…!”

She pulled at her hair for a second (not very hard, mind you, she seemed to do this just for dramatic

emphasis) and then turned back towards the gaping abyss in front of them, staring at it in deep

thought.

After a few moments of silence Zach asked the obvious question that Zorian was pondering as well.

“If the primordial prisons are objects that exist both in the real world and the time loop reality, doesn’t

that make them a sort of a… bridge, for the lack of a better term?” Zach asked Zorian quietly. “If so,

it might be possible to use them as a sort of conduit for opening a passage between this world and

the real one. Hell, releasing one of them from their prisons might not even be necessary!”

“I wouldn’t place my hopes too high on such an idea,” Silverlake suddenly said. Apparently she

wasn’t so deep in her thought that she couldn’t eavesdrop on their conversation. “Primordial prisons

are hard to perceive, nevermind interact with. It would take vastly more skill to use them as a spell

conduit than–”

She suddenly stopped and turned around to face them, an incredulous look on her face.

“Wait, what was that about releasing one of them?”

- break -

After convincing Silverlake that something funny was going on with the world at large and that their

time loop explanation was at least a little bit plausible (and smoothing out some unfortunate

misunderstandings), Silverlake reluctantly agreed to continue teaching them pocket dimension

creation. In addition, Zorian had managed to talk her into selling them the analysis spells she used to

study Panaxeth’s prison in exchange for both of the ingredients for her potion of youth. As much as

she complained that such a trade was ‘profoundly unfair’ due to the mechanics of the time loop, she

just couldn’t resist getting her hands on both of the ingredients she needed to complete her potion of

youth.

Unfortunately, convincing Silverlake that they were onto something had one major unfortunate side-

effect: she was suddenly extremely interested in them. She wanted to know everything about them –

where they came from, who their family was, where their allegiances lay, what their skillset was, how

much money they had at their disposal, everything. And when they had refused to cooperate with

that, she started to spy on them. And then mobilized some of her contacts (apparently she wasn’t as

much of a total hermit as it appeared at first glance) to gather information on them when it turned out

they were too good at evading and foiling scrying attempts and other magic-oriented methods of

spying. This would be very annoying even at the best of times, but what made this especially

problematic was that Zach and Zorian were already doing all sorts of eye-catching things, arranging

all kinds of high-value trades and throwing around ridiculous amounts of cash. This worked just fine

as long as nobody was focusing on them, but the moment a bunch of nosy people were told to

specifically look into what Zach Noveda and Zorian Kazinski were doing… well, suddenly they had a

lot bigger reasons to be interested than one witch’s curiosity. Even if Silverlake backtracked and told

these people that she changed her mind and no longer cared for the information, they wouldn’t stop

their investigation now.

Ugh.

Caught off guard by this change in their routine and forced to temporarily lay low, Zach and Zorian

turned to other things to amuse themselves with. In Zorian’s case, that something was the study of

divine artifacts.

Sitting around in a secret, warded house, Zorian stared at the small collection of items in front of

him. There were seven of them in total: a small silver pyramid, a dark brown wooden staff, a golden

bell, a pitch black disc covered in seemingly random scratches, a large green gem with several light

motes trapped within, a large bronze compass and a plain-looking iron dagger. The dagger had

been recovered from the ruins inside the portal palace orb, while the others had been shamelessly

stolen from private collections and treasuries of small countries. Although it looked unremarkable,

this pile of items would likely inspire greed in even the richest of individuals living on the continent.

“You know that it’s almost impossible to find something useful by studying divine artifacts, right?”

Daimen said, staring intently at the gathered items. Zorian had reluctantly invited Daimen to join him

in this task, seeing how he had much more experience with this sort of thing than he did. “Entire

groups have dedicated their lives to studying one specific divine item and came out empty-handed in

the end.”

“Yes, I know,” said Zorian, picking up the dagger they had found in the orb and flipping it in his hand.

They still had no idea what it did, other than being supernaturally sharp. Divine artifacts were

immune to divination magics so the only way to discover their uses was to either use trial and error

or search through historical records to see if there are any descriptions of the item’s powers in

ancient texts. “But I have something most of those groups don’t – a willingness to destructively study

the item in question for any clues and have it come back intact at the end of each month.”

Daimen made a sour face at him.

“This feels so wrong,” he said uneasily. “These are priceless, irreplaceable relics. It’s sacrilege.”

“Yet you agreed to come here and participate in it,” Zorian noted lightly.

“Well… I can’t say I was never tempted to do something like this,” Daimen sighed. “Are you sure

they’ll be back to normal?”

“I’m sure,” Zorian confirmed, pointing at the dagger in his hands. “I already dismantled this dagger in

the previous restart and it’s back to normal now. However mysterious divine abilities are, the

Sovereign Gate clearly has no issues in duplicating these items over and over again.”

“That’s both reassuring and terrifying,” Daimen noted.

Zorian wondered what his brother would say if he told him that they were currently stuck inside some

kind of weird primordial thing that may or may not be alive and just waiting for a chance to devour

them all. Alas, as funny as it was to fantasize about his reaction to that, it wasn’t worth the drama to

actually go through with telling him about it.

“So, before we begin, I’m kind of curious…” Zorian began. “How did Fortov react to that illusion disc I

made for you?”

The disc was something the Daimen of the previous restart had come up with. In order to help him

convince Fortov to open up and talk to him, Daimen came up with the idea of a disc that would,

when activated, project an illusionary scene of their talk in the previous restart. Zorian was skeptical

of the idea; why would seeing such an illusion convince Fortov of anything? But Daimen insisted it

would work so Zorian humored him. He tapped into his memory of the evening and constructed the

most realistic illusion of the event he could before binding it to a disc that he left in Fortov’s mail.

Strictly speaking, that was the end of his obligations in regards to the matter, but he kind of wanted

to hear what the outcome of that stunt turned out to be.

“Well, you could say it sort of worked,” Daimen said with a small grin.

“Oh?” Zorian asked with a raised eyebrow.

“He’s talking to me, at least,” Daimen shrugged. “That’s all I really wanted out of that disc, so I have

no reason to complain.”

“How did you explain the contents of the disc?” Zorian asked curiously.

“I didn’t,” Daimen grinned. “I used the mystery as an incentive to talk to me. I said I would explain

everything in a month.”

Zorian rolled his eyes at him.

“Anyway, I also have something to talk about before we dive into all this,” Daimen said, sweeping his

hands over the gathered divine artifacts. “I’m pretty sure I have narrowed down the location of the

Key piece that was lost in Xlotic.”

“You have?” Zorian asked, leaning forwards with anticipation. He had to say, his brother’s help was

proving itself invaluable when it came to jobs like this one. If Zach and Zorian had to locate all the

missing pieces of the Key all by themselves it would have taken them much, much longer than this.

“Where is it? Is it the Tower of Hylos-Na? I hope it’s–”

“It’s the Ziggurat of the Sun,” Daimen interrupted him.

Zorian leaned back into his chair with a groan. Out of all the possible options, the Ziggurat of the Sun

was definitely the worst one. It was situated deep into the interior of northern Miasina, in an area that

was once lush grassland, but was now located deep within the Xlotic desert. There were no major

human settlements nearby, just an endless expanse of desert. Simply approaching the ziggurat

required a lengthy, difficult trek through these parched, desolate lands.

And any expedition that reached the ziggurat itself would be faced with the tiny issue of the

ziggurat’s current inhabitants: sulrothum, a species of giant sapient desert wasps that had taken

over the structure when the deserts had claimed the whole area. Sulrothum were almost three

meters long, possessed incredible strength and toughness and there were hundreds of them living

within the ziggurat. As for their friendliness, well… ‘sulrothum’ was a local human word roughly

translating to ‘devil wasp’. Zorian kind of doubted they would allow them to peacefully search their

base for ancient magical artifacts.

“Sorry,” Daimen said. “I know how you feel, but I’m pretty sure I got it right. The imperial ring is there,

provided the sulrothum haven’t already found it and taken it elsewhere.”

“Which is a distinct possibility,” Zorian noted.

“At least you have that in-built Key detector, so we’ll know if the ring is no longer there before we

waste too much time on securing the place,” Daimen shrugged.

“Of course the damn ring has to be in the most difficult location possible,” Zorian grunted unhappily.

“Just getting there will be an issue.”

“Actually, I think I have a solution to both that and how to reach Blantyrre in a reasonable time

frame,” Daimen grinned before throwing a rolled up poster at him. “Have a look and tell me what you

think.”

Zorian caught the poster before it had time to hit his face, gave Daimen an unamused look because

he was pretty sure his brother deliberately aimed the object at his head, and then unrolled it to take a

look.

It was a propaganda poster, basically. It showed a pretty picture of a weird-looking wooden ship that

was apparently commissioned by the king of Aranhal, one of the larger nations in Xlotic. It was an

airship, Zorian realized.

An expensive, experimental airship designed by some of the best artificers in Aranhal as part of

some kind of national vanity project. It was mostly done, the construction crew was just putting

finishing touches on it currently and it was planned it would undergo a test flight in a few weeks.

“So?” Daimen said with a knowing smile on his face. “What do you think?”

Zorian stared at the poster for a second before looking Daimen straight in the eye.

“I think we have ourselves an airship to steal.”

Chapter 078

Grinding Stone

Airships were not held in very high regard among people who cared about such things. The idea of a

flying vessel was something that had captivated mankind since time immemorial, of course, but every

concrete design for such a vessel had been disappointing. After all, although magic could make a ship fly

easily enough, doing so on a long-term basis was very expensive in terms of mana. Moreover, this cost

increased massively if one wanted to not just fly, but fly fast and retain a healthy amount of

maneuverability in the process, too. This was why very few mages employed magical flight without a

pressing reason to do so, even though flight magic wasn’t that complicated and many mages were

capable of it.

As a result of this fundamental issue, most airships couldn’t actually fly around as they pleased, but

instead had to follow fixed paths that took them through mana-rich areas that could sustain them in the

air. And even so, airship designers still had to ruthlessly keep the vessel’s weight down during

construction. This made the resulting product relatively fragile and greatly limited the vessel’s

usefulness. They also tended to be rather expensive to build and maintain, as the materials which went

into them tended to be on the pricier side and the design of the vessel itself was something that required

a whole team of skilled professionals. It also didn’t help that there was no standard airship design

available to the public, meaning that most airship construction teams started their projects from scratch

and were often the only ones who could truly fix or modify the vessel.

Finally, there was a tiny, yet very important issue of how incredibly lethal an airship crash was

compared to, say, the sinking of a sea-going ship. If anything went wrong, it was all too easy for everyone

on board to die. There had been a number of high-profile airship accidents over the years, including a

rather spectacular one where the Tetran airship Gepid plunged straight into the sea not long after

starting its maiden flight. And even if one ignored the possibility of a simple malfunction, there was still

the matter of the many flying magical beasts that could easily crash the airship if encountered at an

inopportune time.

In light of all that, it was not hard to see why airships weren’t in more widespread use. They were not

economically viable for private interests and state militaries generally found flying magical creatures to

be more effective as an aerial combat force. Despite that, people stubbornly kept trying to make them

viable. There was something about a flying vessel that people found irresistibly captivating.

There were considerable differences between regions, however. The states of northern Miasina, for

instance, were the leaders when it came to investment into airship research. Due to the vast stretches of

desert that surrounded them, the nations of Xlotic saw more potential in airships than Altazian ones.

Building roads and railways in the inhospitable interior of northern Miasina was exceptionally difficult,

and there were few population centers big enough to justify an expensive teleport platform. A free-

flying, economically-viable airship that could traverse the Xlotic desert would be a huge boon to

whoever made it.

Pearl of Aranhal, the airship Zorian wanted to steal, definitely hadn’t been designed with economic

viability in mind. No expenses had been spared in its construction. Although Zorian had not been able to

find concrete numbers anywhere, the final price tag was rumored to be positively astronomical. The

airship’s capabilities, however, were said to be appropriately impressive for something that had so much

money sunk into it. It was fast, maneuverable and surprisingly robust for an airship. Most importantly

for Zorian, though, it boasted an experimental power core that allowed it to operate independently of

ambient mana for long periods of time.

After some discussion with Zach, they decided not to make a move on the airship in this particular

restart, however. Half of the restart had already passed and they were already committed on many other

fronts. Besides, due to Silverlake’s earlier inquiries, people were still paying close attention to them.

Zorian still decided to look around a little to get a feel for what they were dealing with.

Unsurprisingly, the airship was under significant protection. Not so much against thieves, since the idea

of someone outright stealing the airship was kind of ridiculous, but against spies and saboteurs. The

defenses were tight enough to thwart Zorian’s casual probing, but he was confident he could get through

them in time. It might take several restarts, but it would happen. The bigger problem, in his opinion, was

that the Pearl of Aranhal required a crew of ten in order to take off and land, which made the idea of two

people stealing it somewhat problematic. He would probably have to wait for Zach to be able to cast the

simulacrum spell before they could make the attempt. Another problem, though a comparatively smaller

one, was that some small but critical pieces of the airship hadn’t been installed, and possibly not even

made yet. Zorian was confident he could manufacture and install these components himself, but he

would need access to the relevant blueprints first…

‘Once upon a time, one of my ambitions was to examine a train to see how its engines work,’ Zorian

thought to himself nostalgically. ‘Now I’m casually planning how to steal and analyze an experimental

airship in my free time. Even taking the time loop into account, it’s still amazing how far I’ve come since

then. I wonder what my old self would have said to something like that…’

That, of course, was something impossible to answer. He shook his head and focused on more immediate

matters. Currently, he was going to meet someone he hadn’t spoken to for a very, very long time –

Zenomir Olgai, the old language expert he had once sought out to help him figure out what happened to

him. Back then, he had been murdered by the invaders not long after talking to him, so he had reflexively

avoided the man ever since, suspecting him a spy. However, none of his investigations of Ibasan

collaborators and cultists pointed to Zenomir being one of them. Thus, when Zenomir’s name popped up

while seeking out a translator that could help him with some of the documents he had acquired in

Aranhal, he decided to pay him a visit. He even intended to drop some hints about the invasion while he

was there, just to see if someone would try to murder him again because of it. Who knew, maybe

Zenomir was part of some super-secret section of the invaders that other members didn’t normally

know about.

As he approached Zenomir’s office, though, he suddenly stopped when he felt a familiar presence.

A bunch of cephalic rats were lingering in the area, hidden inside the walls. The swarm quickly

withdrew their telepathic probe when they noticed his mind was well shielded, but Zorian was practiced

enough at mental shielding that even the faintest of mental attacks could not escape his notice.

He frowned. If cephalic rats had been loitering around Zenomir’s office back when he had visited the

man, it was no wonder that Zorian had ended up being a target. That only raised another questions

though: why were the cephalic rats paying attention to Zenomir? The man was somewhat famous as an

incredible polyglot and language expert, but that shouldn’t be of much interest to the invaders.

After some thought, he decided to leave the cephalic rats alone for now. He knocked on Zenomir’s office

door and waited.

He waited for nearly fifteen minutes. Apparently he had arrived at a somewhat bad time, since the old

teacher was talking to someone already. Another student, Zorian eventually realized. He took a quick

peek at the student’s mind to make sure he was not connected to the cephalic rats and found out that he

wasn’t. He was just a student that had picked Zenomir as his mentor and was now arguing with him over

something. Zorian didn’t linger inside his mind long enough to find out what, as he disliked invading

other people’s privacy with his mental powers unless it was truly necessary.

Eventually the meeting ended and Zenomir called him in. Zorian gracefully accepted the man’s offer to

sit down and went right to business.

“I’m here because I was told you could help me translate a highly technical document written in Aranhal

Ikosian,” Zorian told him. “Or at least point me towards someone who is up to the task.”

“Ah yes, Aranhal,” Zenomir said sagely. “They do speak a particularly distinct form of our tongue, don’t

they? Can you show me the sample of what you’re working with?”

Zorian took out a few pages of technical writing out of his school bag and handed them to the old

language expert. He wasn’t worried about Zenomir recognizing them as illegally acquired. Unless he was

inexplicably connected to Aranhal’s airship construction team in addition to his apparent link to

invaders, the text should mean little to him.

Zenomir carefully put on a pair of reading glasses and glanced through the papers in silence.

“Lots of unknown technical jargon, I see. Airship construction materials? My, what an interesting

topic…” Zenomir mused, before giving Zorian a good-natured smile. “I can see why you were referred

my way, though it somewhat saddens me that a student of our fine academy did not think to seek me out

right away. At the very least I’d give you my initial opinion free of charge, which is probably more than

you got out of whoever sent you here.”

Zorian could tell that the man wasn’t really angry with him for this oversight, merely giving him a

friendly warning that he had failed to take advantage of his academy membership to its fullest extent.

Sadly, while Zenomir was both friendly and polite, the events that transpired after Zorian had talked to

him the last time around and the cephalic rats lurking in the walls had made it impossible for Zorian to

really trust him. So he just nodded sagely at Zenomir’s reminder and moved on.

“Let me ask you something first,” Zenomir began. “Is this document that you want translated an isolated

thing or are you planning on collaborating with someone from Aranhal on something?”

“The project I’m working on does involve a fair bit of interaction with Aranhal natives,” Zorian

reluctantly admitted.

Thankfully, Zenomir seemed to think nothing of Zorian’s admission that he was going to interact heavily

with people on another continent. Zorian would think this sort of thing would raise some eyebrows, but

apparently not.

They spent the next ten minutes discussing what the translation job would entail. Zenomir asked him a

couple of questions about the exact nature of this ‘project’ he was working on, but thankfully he backed

off when Zorian told him it was confidential. He confirmed that this sort of translation job was well

within his capabilities, though it would take a couple of days and wouldn’t be exactly cheap. None of this

was a problem for Zorian, though, and he told the old teacher as much before the man raised another

idea.

“I’m going to be a little bold here, but perhaps simply hiring a person to translate this document might

not be the best course of action,” Zenomir said. “I think you should invest some time in learning the

language itself. You’d be amazed how many layers of communication you lose by relying on external

translation and I guarantee your partners will respect you a lot more if you can communicate with them

directly.”

“I’m unlikely to interact with people from Aranhal after this project is done, though,” Zorian said,

frowning. Plus, he was pretty sure there wouldn’t be too many respectful exchanges between him and

the Aranhal airship construction team, language barriers or no. “That’s a lot of wasted effort for one job.”

“Learning a language is never a wasted effort, young man,” Zenomir lectured him. “It develops your mind

and expands your horizons! Besides, it’s not as if you’re starting completely from scratch. Aranhal

Ikosian is different from standard Ikosian, but not unintelligible.”

“That’s true,” Zorian admitted. It was more like a heavily divergent dialect with a lot of words borrowed

from the native language spoken by the people before Ikosian conquest. Much like many of the local

versions of Ikosian on Altazia, really. “It would still be a lot of work for someone who isn’t naturally

inclined towards languages like you are, though. No offense, Professor Olgai.”

“Hmph. Wait here for a minute,” Zenomir said, quickly springing up from his chair without waiting for

his answer, and then entered a nearby side-room in his office and closed the door.

He stayed there for over ten minutes. Judging by the quiet sounds emanating from behind the closed

door, the man was shifting around boxes and searching through stacks of paper and books in search of

something. Zorian sighed. This was taking way longer than he thought it would…

Finally, the old teacher returned to his office, carrying a tall stack of books, folders and loose sheets of

paper. He was carrying so much that he had to use his elbows to manipulate the door handle, which he

did with the practiced grace of someone who does things like that all the time. He dumped the pile on

the table in front of Zorian and pointed at it.

“Tell you what, young man,” Zenomir said. “This here is a small selection of dictionaries, translation

guides and random notes regarding Aranhal Ikosian that I had in my store room–”

“You just happened to have Aranhal-related stuff in your store room?” Zorian asked incredulously.

“Oh, I have all sorts of things gathering dust in there,” said Zenomir dismissively. “Some of the teachers

are rarely in their offices, but I pretty much do most of my work here. So it’s handy to have most of my

resources close by. Anyway, why don’t you take this and see how much of that document of yours you

can translate yourself using this as a guide. If you impress me with your work, I promise I’ll help you

translate the rest of your project for free.”

Zorian opened his mouth to point out that he’d rather just pay for translation but Zenomir wouldn’t hear

it.

“Free!” Zenomir repeated. “Do you hate money, young man? Don’t be in such a hurry to part with it. I’m

not very demanding, don’t worry. Just do your best and I’m sure you’ll do fine. Who knows, maybe you’ll

even discover you have a previously undiscovered passion for languages, eh?”

Zorian seriously doubted that, but he could see there was no use in arguing with Zenomir about this.

Besides, now that he thought about it a little, it might actually be useful to get some elementary

proficiency in Aranhal Ikosian. He might need to interrogate the airship construction crew at some

point, and that was going to be really difficult if their language was completely opaque to him. Not even

mind reading helped in that case, since people’s thoughts were heavily shaped by the language they

spoke.

“Very well, I’ll give it a try,” Zorian relented.

“Excellent!” Zenomir said, beaming at him happily.

“Still, is it really okay for you to just give me all this?” Zorian pointed at the pile in front of him. “Some of

this stuff looks… irreplaceable.”

“It’s fine,” said Zenomir, waving him off. “You look like a serious young man. I’m sure you’ll return it all

in one piece.”

Zorian didn’t say anything to that. He just stared at the pile of books and paper in front of him, lost in

thought, for a few seconds.

“Well,” Zenomir suddenly said, clapping his hands. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask? If not–”

“Actually, yes,” Zorian said. “Are you a member of the Cult of the World Dragon?”

Zenomir eyebrows shot up at the question.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

“They officially call themselves the Esoteric Order of the Celestial Dragon,” Zorian said. “They are one of

the newer religious organizations, one dedicated to the worship of the entity that is commonly thought

to reside in the center of the world. They have a rather large presence here in Cyoria. Are you a member

of the Order?”

“Ah, I think I have heard something about them once,” Zenomir mused, tapping his long white beard

with his hand. “But no, I am not a member. Why do you ask?”

“Are you an agent of Ulquaan Ibasa?” Zorian asked, completely ignoring the old teacher’s question.

“Now wait just a minute here,” Zenomir said, finally getting somewhat angry. “What kind of question is

that!?”

Hmm. He was being completely honest. He was not knowingly associated with either the Ibasans of the

Cult of the World Dragon.

With a small sigh, Zorian reached deeper into Zenomir’s mind, casually brushing aside the old teacher’s

rudimentary mental defenses, and modified his short-term memory to erase this conversation out of his

mind. The whole process only lasted less than a minute, due to the relatively trivial nature of the

memory edit, after which Zorian withdrew from Zenomir’s mind.

The old teacher blinked a few times, gradually shrugging off the mental daze that Zorian placed on him

so he could work in peace, before giving Zorian a surprised look.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Uh, you kind of dozed off for several seconds there,” Zorian said, pretending awkwardness.

“Ah. I guess old age is finally catching up to me,” Zenomir said ruefully, shaking his head. “Where were

we, again?”

“Actually, I think we’re kind of done here,” Zorian said. “But first, let me ask you a somewhat strange

question. Do you have any idea why someone would want to spy on you?”

“Spy on me?” Zenomir asked incredulously. “Why no, I have no idea why someone would want that.

Frankly, I wish more people would be interested in my work. If someone wanted to know more about

what I do, why, all they have to do is ask!”

“I’ll cut straight to the chase, then,” Zorian said. “Due to some exotic inborn abilities that I have, I happen

to know that there are rats lurking in the walls around your office. And not normal rats either.”

“Ah, now that… is quite concerning,” said Zenomir. He sat down in his chair and frowned. He tapped on

his beard a few more times, deep in thought. “Hmm. Rats in the walls…”

After a minute or so, Zenomir slapped his palm against the table, scaring Zorian back into attention.

“Aha!” Zenomir said triumphantly. “I’ve got it, I think. I don’t think these rats, if they are indeed spies as

you suspect, are here for me. As it happens, the headmaster’s office is very close to mine. The

headmaster is rarely in it, but a lot of visitors and academy documentation passes through the place.”

Zorian had to agree this did make a great deal of sense. As a place of such importance, the headmaster’s

office was probably protected by heavier and more sophisticated wards and other defenses… but the

corridors approaching it might have been overlooked due to cost-cutting and such. He would have to

take a walk through the academy to see if there were other places that cephalic rats linger as they did

here.

“Of course, this will have to be reported,” Zenomir’s shoulders suddenly sagged. “I can already sense a

headache coming. So much paperwork…”

“I don’t suppose you could exclude me from the report?” Zorian asked. He would mindwipe him again if

he had to, but he would rather avoid doing that.

“I might as well,” Zenomir sighed. He apparently didn’t have a single suspicious bone in his body. “No

reason for both of us to suffer. Though I have to ask you to keep quiet about this, or else the academy

might go after you for ruining its reputation.”

Zorian assured him that he had no intention of spreading this around, picked up the stack of books and

papers the man had given him and then left. Instead of exiting the academy immediately, though, he took

the extended route that saw him passing next to the headmaster’s office a couple of times.

It turned out that, yes, all approaches to the headmaster’s office had cephalic rats lurking in the walls. It

seemed that Zenomir’s theory was very much correct.

Well. That was one mystery solved! It had been a while since he had solved one of those without raising

at least one new question in return.

Somehow, it made him feel like he was finally getting close to a solution for all this.

- break -

In an unremarkable, out-of-the-way cave system situated a healthy distance away from Cyoria, Zach,

Zorian and two aranea were training their magical skills.

Zach was tinkering with a large wooden chest, practicing his pocket dimension creation. His ability in

this area was slowly but surely overtaking Zorian, despite him dismissing some of his simulacrums and

focusing more of his energies on the issue. As far as Zorian could tell, this was purely due to Zach’s

massive mana reserves and the resulting ability to sustain the mana-intensive training longer than

Zorian ever could. Zorian wasn’t any more talented or hard-working than Zach was, after all, and every

advantage and training method he had was also something Zach had access to as well. It made perfect

sense that Zach was pulling away from him in this regard, but that didn’t stop Zorian from feeling kind of

jealous and annoyed with the situation. A petty part of him was tempted to start hiding some of the

relevant shaping exercises and tricks he had found while combing through the various spellbooks and

training manuals in order to close the gap somewhat, but he resisted the impulse. That would be stupid

and self-defeating. Zach getting better was a good thing.

That aside, neither Zach nor Zorian had really progressed far in terms of pocket dimension expertise.

The chest that Zach was fiddling with still functioned on essentially the same principles as the marble-

storing boxes they had practiced with previously. It was the simplest form of pocket dimension, which

involved expanding the available space inside a container. Essentially, it allowed a mage to produce an

enclosed space that was larger on the inside than it was on the outside.

There were a lot of limitations involved with this procedure. The pocket dimension required mana to

keep existing, so such an item could only be stored in areas where ambient mana was abundant enough

to sustain them. Or be provided with an in-built power source of some sort. A complicated, fiddly spell

formula had to be embedded into the walls of the container, or else the space expansion would expire

after less than a day, just like any other spell. Finally, the weight of the object inside did not disappear, so

a chest with several tons of rock inside would still weigh several tons, no matter how small it looked.

Of course, weight concerns aside, cramming too much stuff into your pocket dimension container isn’t a

good idea to begin with. If the container is damaged, the pocket dimension anchored to its interior

would immediately fall apart, forcing the contents back into mundane space. Typically, this meant the

pocket dimension would explode, showering everything around it with high-speed shrapnel of its

former contents. For this reason, it was also a good idea to make the container as sturdy and damage-

resistant as possible. Zach and Zorian learned that very quickly after cramming too many marbles into a

box whose bottom could not handle the weight, thus creating their very own marble-flinging cluster

bomb.

The more time the two of them sank into studying pocket dimensions, the more Zorian realized how

incredible the portable palace orb they recovered in Koth was. It had some kind of internal power

source that could sustain it indefinitely and made it completely self-sufficient from its surroundings, it

weighed no more than a regular glass orb of its size would and it contained an incredible amount of

space and matter inside. Zorian was tempted to dismiss all of this as evidence of divine tampering,

except that Silverlake stubbornly insisted that all of this was potentially achievable through familiar

mortal magic. Yes, even the power source thing. Somehow.

Then again, she did maintain a rather large pocket dimension with some pretty potent defensive wards

in an area that really shouldn’t be able to support such. How was she doing that, anyway?

Well, it wasn’t something that could be figured out by idle contemplation. He put the matter out of his

mind for now and focused his attention to the two aranea next to him. Both of them had been sent here

by the Silent Doorway Adepts at Zorian’s request. Ever since he had become capable of giving them a

large list of novel gate addresses and a sizeable amount of strategic information about their local region,

they became much more willing to cooperate with him and humor his requests. In this case they allowed

him to recruit two of their best ‘retrievers’. Thieves, basically. Zorian called them Ghost and Veil, though

these were only shortened versions of their real names.

Ghost and Veil were originally meant to show him how to use his mental powers to infiltrate guarded

sites more easily, but he found them to be surprisingly friendly and curious for a pair of thieves and

spies. They fulfilled their part of the bargain without any reservations, and were even willing to go

beyond what was originally agreed upon… provided he traded some instruction and secrets of his own

to them in return.

As such, they were currently gleefully practicing some of the magic he had given them on each other,

steadily refining the somewhat clunky spells that had been converted from the human spellcasting

system into an aranean one and thus suffered from a fair bit of inefficiencies. Zorian left them alone to

their work for the most part, only involving himself if he saw them making an obvious mistake, but he

made sure to survey the results of their work at the end of each day. When he finally found a way for him

and Zach to leave this time loop, he intended to bundle up little improvements like this into one giant

package and then gift them to the various aranean webs that had helped him over the years.

As for Zorian, he was tackling something that he had wanted to obtain for quite a while now. He was

learning the aranean skill of ‘going dark’ – the psychic equivalent of the mind blank spell.

The skill was pretty hard to obtain, since the aranea saw it as inherently shady, meaning that most of

them weren’t even willing to admit they knew how to perform it, much less trade it to someone who

could very well be hostile. It was only after a lot of prodding and some high-value trades that Ghost and

Veil agreed to teach it to him. Even then, they made him promise in the strongest possible terms that he

would use it sparingly.

They need not have worried. Zorian had heard enough horror stories about the mage equivalent of the

skill to know he had to be careful about this. Mind blank was well known to be insanity-inducing if used

on a long-term basis. Mages that left it active for too long became increasingly paranoid, becoming

obsessed with imaginary plots and threats. They would inevitably begin to view everyone around them

as a threat, alien and untrustworthy, and withdraw from society as much as possible to pursue their own

inscrutable goals. There was a highly-publicized case a few years back where a very rich mage went

down this path and eventually turned his isolated estate into a foreboding death-trap filled with layers

upon layers of traps, golems, powerful wards and vicious guard beasts. His children were not very

amused when they realized he had blown all of his wealth on that and that they wouldn’t be inheriting

any of the money that they had been counting on.

This ‘going dark’ was harder than he thought it would be, though. He knew that mind blank was a

difficult, high-level spell, but he had naively thought that being psychic would negate that somehow. It

was a mind-related thing, after all, so why wouldn’t his innate talent work on it? But no. If anything, that

only made things harder. Even mundane mages felt a surge of wrongness upon cutting their minds off

from the world, suffering from vertigo, illusionary static noise and headaches before fully mastering the

spell. For psychics like Zorian, though, it was a little like plucking out your own eyeballs because you

knew you could grow them back later. Even though one knew that no permanent loss would occur, the

very idea just felt wrong on a deep-seated, visceral level. It wasn’t easy to make yourself do this to

yourself.

He was stalling, he realized. He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm himself for another attempt.

Okay. The 27th time was the charm…

He sank his awareness inward, carefully mapped out the borders of his consciousness and then sort of…

folded his mind upon itself.

It was horrible. It can be scarcely described in words alone, but he felt like his whole world had gone

dark and confined, pressing down on him. He almost dropped the attempt right there, just like he had so

many times before, but he gritted his teeth and persisted.

As the borders of his consciousness contracted, getting smaller and smaller, he breathed deeper and

deeper, a deep fear welling up from the depths of his soul and causing him to pause. He had an

unreasonable, unexplainable feeling of being entombed alive, imprisoned in a cage made out of his own

flesh and skin, and it took him an unknown amount of time to take that final step.

With one last, desperate push, his mind finally finished folding upon itself and stabilized. The sense of

wrongness was still there, but muted and manageable.

Everything seemed so unnaturally quiet all of a sudden, even though nothing in his surroundings had

really changed.

Well okay, that wasn’t entirely true. Ghost and Veil had stopped casting spells at each other and were

looking at him with interest.

“You did it!” Veil said excitedly. She was using a vocalization spell instead of resorting to telepathy, since

Zorian’s current status kind of prevented that. “Amazing! I thought it would take you at least another 30

tries!”

“It’s not that amazing,” Ghost said dourly. “It’s a decidedly average progression for someone of his level

of skill.”

“He’s a human, though,” Veil objected. “I don’t think it’s fair to judge him by our standards.”

“You’re right. We should be even stricter,” Ghost said. “After all, he’s not nearly as reliant on his mental

powers as we are.”

“I’m right here,” Zorian complained.

“Don’t listen to this killjoy,” Veil told him. “Just enjoy knowing that everything will be a lot easier from

now on. The first time is always the hardest. Oh, and you should be extra careful about not shutting

yourself from the Great Web for too long during these initial steps. The ability degrades the mind much

faster if not done flawlessly, and your first handful of attempts probably won’t be that good.”

“Just like mind blank, then,” Zach noted from the side, not taking his eyes off the chest he was working

on. “Until you’re sure you mastered the spell, it is recommended you keep it on for no more than half an

hour maximum.”

“Umm, sure. I’m not too familiar with human time measurements, but let’s go with your friend’s

suggestion on that,” Veil said.

Zorian nodded absent-mindedly. Frankly, he was tempted to end the effect immediately but he knew he

had to acclimatize himself to it if he wanted to use it even remotely seriously. He was just about to ask

the two aranea if there was anything else he had to watch out when Zach suddenly jumped up and

started laughing triumphantly.

“It works!” Zach said, swinging his chest around and then raising it above his head. It was actually mildly

impressive, because Zorian knew for a fact that the chest was quite heavy and not something he

personally could swing around like that. “It’s finished and it totally works!”

“What were you working on, anyway?” Zorian asked. Clearly Zach hadn’t been working on just another

expanded chest, or else he wouldn’t be so happy to succeed.

“This?” Zach asked rhetorically, shaking the chest held in his arms. “Why, it’s an icebox of beer holding,

of course! Not only can it hold a large number of beer bottles, it also keeps them at a nice, cold

temperature for perfect consumption!”

“An icebox of… wait, you made all this fuss about a simple expanded chest with a chilling field added on

top?” Zorian asked unhappily.

“Oh hush, you know it’s a genius idea,” Zach said. “Don’t be so cranky. I think the mind blank is already

affecting you.”

Ugh. Zorian doubted this was true, but he immediately dismissed the effect anyway. Better to be safe

than sorry.

There was plenty of time to work on this later.

- break -

Eventually, after an annoyingly long time, Silverlake agreed to meet with them again. By then, the

investigators she had sent after them had thoroughly disrupted their plans and a lot of the restart had

already passed, so they were not as enthusiastic about the whole thing as they might have been. Zorian

really hoped this could be avoided in future restarts, somehow, because there was no way they could

tolerate these kinds of delays and disruptions on a persistent basis.

Surprisingly, she wanted to meet in some public space in Cyoria, not in her forest hideout. After some

back-and-forth, they agreed to hold a meeting in one of Cyoria’s less visited parks. There would be some

minor danger of being overheard, but it was likely that anyone that did hear them would dismiss them

as speaking nonsense.

“You’ve put me in a very unfavorable position,” Silverlake told them the moment they met. “I think I

believe you about this month endlessly repeating itself, as crazy as that sounds, but that means that I

basically have no leverage against you whatsoever. You can promise to pay me back in all sorts of ways,

but I have no means to enforce any of that. Even if I feed you truth potions and decide you sincerely

mean to honor your promises, who’s to say you won’t ever change your minds in the future? If you

decide to renege on your side of the deal, I will never know.”

“So what’s your decision, then?” Zorian asked. There was nothing he could say to make her feel better

about that.

“What else?” she laughed. “I’ll work with you and hope you’re not planning to screw me over. What other

choice do I have?”

“We were worried you’d ask to put us under a geas,” Zach admitted.

It was a reasonable fear. Forced magical oaths were one of the things witches were infamous for using.

“Geas have limited usefulness these days,” Silverlake said, shaking her head sadly. “They were feared

once upon a time because mages were comparatively rare and often had a very limited selection of

spells at their disposal. In those times, finding someone who could lift a geas placed on you was

legitimately hard. These days you can just walk into your local mage guild branch and hire someone to

get rid of it within a few days. Placing a geas on you would just create resentment. No, I’m afraid I’ll have

to use the carrot and the poison strategy.”

“Err, isn’t that supposed to be the carrot and the stick?” Zorian tried.

“We just established that I don’t have much of a stick when it comes to you two, no?” Silverlake said. “So

I can’t really counter-attack, but I can make myself a poisonous pill to swallow. Incidentally, I would like

to point out that I have made myself immune to all truth potions I know of and that my mind has been

rigged to collapse should my mental defenses ever be violently shattered. This is something I did long

before I met you two, so even attacking me first thing in the restart won’t negate it. Just an interesting

tidbit, you know?”

“Yeah, we know,” Zach said with exasperation. “Subduing you and trying to forcefully get your secrets

out of your mind would be a total chore and take way too much time, so we better ask nicely.”

“Exactly,” Silverlake nodded happily.

“So what’s the carrot part of the deal?” Zach asked curiously.

“I am an alchemist of incredible skill and I have lived for a very long time. I know how to make many

wondrous potions and know incredible secrets… none of which I can be persuaded to share with you in

less than a month’s time. At the very least, I am confident that you’ll seek me out eventually for my

secret of how to stop aging and restore your youth. I know, I know, you’re in the prime of your life now

and old age seems distant… but when your body starts to fail and your mind dims, I am confident you’ll

become interested to discover what I know about the topic.” She paused dramatically for a moment. “Of

course, if you were really smart, you would strike while the iron is hot and come to me while you’re still

young and I haven’t worked out how to get these blasted eggs on my own. That way I won’t think you’re

desperate for a solution and you’ll have lots of things that interest me. You’d be able to get a much better

deal that way…”

“How do you know we won’t be able to figure out such a thing ourselves?” Zach asked.

“What, you think youth potions grow on trees or something?” she scoffed. “This is something that takes

an absolute master of alchemy to accomplish. You may be decent enough in comparison to your average

alchemist, but it takes a lot more than that to tackle this kind of problem. Besides, you seem to be paying

other experts to do your alchemical research and complicated work for you. That says everything about

your future alchemical expertise, really.”

There was some truth in that. Zorian did have a healthy amount of interest in alchemy, but he liked spell

formula better and it was impossible to focus on everything at once. Even in a time loop and with a small

army of simulacrums running around.

“So I guess you’re not really interested in refining your eternal youth potion over multiple restarts with

our help, then?” Zorian asked.

“Good heavens no, why would I want to do that?” she asked incredulously. “That would just remove

what little leverage I have over you, and for what? I’m confident I’ll get it right eventually. I have time,

even without the time loop. I’ve been working on this for a very long time, what’s a couple of years

more?”

“I see,” Zorian said. “Well, I am glad you are at least willing to work with us on this. Though I do hope

your future selves will not sabotage our work with spying and delay the meeting for most of the month

like you have.”

“I don’t know about that,” Silverlake said, not in the least bit apologetic. “Your story is very crazy and

requires checking. It’s hard to speed that up.”

“Ha, well… don’t be so sure about that,” Zorian said, reaching into his backpack to retrieve a handful of

Kael’s notebooks that the morlock boy had given him permission to share with others. “Let me tell you

about the wonders of notebook transfers across restarts…”

- break -

With Silverlake’s cooperation secured, the restart ended uneventfully, the only notable difference being

the larger number of notebooks that Zorian was transferring into the next restart. Considering that the

orb’s memory bank was practically limitless in size, this was not a big deal.

The next several restarts were somewhat routine. They were learning pocket dimension expertise from

Silverlake, looking deeper into Veyers’ ties with the Cult of the World Dragon, figuring out the activation

procedure of the Bakora Gates and the construction methods of the Ibasan ones, doing small

preparations for the airship theft, experimenting with divine artifacts and sifting through the ruins

inside the portable palace orb. Zorian was messing around with mental enhancements while Zach was

steadily getting closer to being able to create his own simulacrums.

Their various other operations, such as hiring various experts to do research and development for them,

also continued at a steady pace.

Just like that, another six restarts had gone by.

Chapter 079

Crime and Evading Punishment

Although Aranhal widely advertised their new airship to their own populace and neighboring

countries, actually seeing the Pearl of Aranhal took a bit of effort. It was located next to an important

industrial town, but wasn’t actually in it. Instead, the construction site was placed outside the

settlement itself, close enough to be supplied with relative ease but far enough to foil casual visitors.

The airship was currently grounded in an oval-shaped holding structure and surrounded by

extensive scaffolding. Ringing it was a collection of storehouses, barracks, watchtowers and

temporary housing for workers and overseers. Finally, the entire work camp was surrounded by a

warded, alteration-made stone wall that stopped minor magical creatures or petty criminals from

simply waltzing into the place. Neither this, nor any of the other, more subtle defenses could stop

Zach and Zorian from infiltrating the place without being seen, of course. They were currently

standing on one of the observation platforms attached to the ship, observing it.

Zorian had to say, the Pearl of Aranhal was a beautiful construct. Airships were often depicted as

floating sea-going ships – an image that stemmed from the earliest known models, which really were

simply modified sea-going ships. Ancient airship creators were working with a lower technological

base and less developed economic infrastructure, forcing them to pick an already constructed vessel

as a base for their project. Most modern airships, on the other hand, were built from the ground up

as dedicated aerial vessels, so they rarely looked anything like a mundane ship. They tended to

either have long cylindrical hulls covered in stabilizing fins or be some manner of a triangle. The

Pearl of Aranhal bucked the trend there, in that it had a relatively flat, rhombus-like shape. It kind of

gave Zorian an impression of a giant leaf. It certainly looked like it should be fast and maneuverable,

but it made Zorian somewhat skeptical of the claim it was especially robust and durable by airship

standards. Well, no matter. They wanted the ship because of its speed and flight endurance, not

combat ability.

In any case, the airship’s name seemed particularly fitting in light of its current coloration. Its hull was

painted in dazzling, pure white, with no overt markings or identifying patterns. This was meant to be

only temporary, however. Aranhal intended to decorate the ship further before unveiling it to the

waiting public, but they had yet to settle down on what kind of color scheme and decorations to put

there. The question seemed quite trivial to Zorian, but was apparently an intensely divisive political

question that caused many bitter arguments in Aranhal’s halls of power. The current overseer was

continually kicking the can down the road in regards to the issue, fearful that whoever lost the

dispute would try to cut the project’s budget out of spite.

“What do you say?” Zach suddenly said, rocking in place on his heels. He looked quite bored. “It’s

about time, no?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Zorian answered. He was a bit nervous, he realized, so he may have been stalling a

little. “I’ll go tell my copies to set the monkeys loose.”

He reached to his simulacrums through his soul, his ability to use his soul as a telepathic conduit as

natural as breathing by now, and gave them a simple ‘go’ signal. They already knew what to do.

Golden triclopses were monkey-like magic creatures native to the area. They had bright yellow fur,

two small horns on top of their heads and an extra eye in the middle of their forehead. Their third

eyes gave them the ability to perceive magic in some strange, hard to understand way, which made

them quite interested in magic items. Of course, being only as smart as regular animals and

somewhat aggressive, their interest tended to be unhealthy for the magic items in question and the

humans that owned them. Zach and Zorian had captured several groups of these beasts earlier to

set loose as a distraction. They were particularly good for this because the construction team had

already had a number of smaller clashes with the local triclops communities, and thus having a

bunch of them making trouble in the base wasn’t immediately suspicious. They had tried this already

in the three previous restarts to test the waters, and they knew that the guards would first move to

contain the situation before wondering if someone had sent this unusually large group of them here

intentionally.

By then, of course, it would be too late.

After the golden triclopses were set loose upon the unsuspecting base, Zach and Zorian remained in

their current spot for a while, waiting. It would take a while before the creatures were discovered, the

severity of the problem became obvious, and before the majority of the base’s guards were

mobilized to deal with them. Zorian monitored the situation through his simulacrums, whose senses

he could tap into with ease. His studies of the cephalic rat swarms and the god-touched hydra living

in the portable palace orb had done much to improve his ability to coordinate with his simulacrums.

They weren’t quite a single mind yet, but he probably didn’t want that to begin with.

Zach also had simulacrums present in the base. He had only managed to get them working recently,

so they tended to have far more quirks and differences from the original than Zorian’s own did.

However, they needed those simulacrums if they wanted to steal the ship and it was pretty unlikely

any of them would go insane and try to kill them, so whatever.

“There,” Zorian eventually said. “Everyone who was going to get pulled to deal with the monkeys is

gone. It’s now or never.”

“Finally,” Zach said.

He didn’t say anything else, instead opting to jump down from the platform. Zorian followed after him

with a sigh, giving the simulacrums the signal to drop whatever they were doing and converge on the

ship. Even Zach’s simulacrums, since his fellow time traveler seemed to have forgotten about his

copies in his hurry to get to the action. Or maybe he just expected Zorian to take care of that for him

– it was actually easier for Zorian to coordinate Zach’s simulacrums than it was for Zach himself, due

to his lack of easy telepathy. Though, since Zach and his simulacrums were largely identical in mind,

it should be quite possible for him to use telepathy to communicate with his copies with ease, even if

he wasn’t a natural mind mage like Zorian. He made a mental note to talk to Zach about that later…

Zach, Zorian and their simulacrums surged forward, pushing past the shocked technicians and

civilian staff and disabling any armed resistance they encountered. Zach and his simulacrums broke

down the scaffolding and the anchor beams that were holding the airship locked down while Zorian

and his simulacrums went about installing the missing airship components and ejecting anyone that

remained inside the ship.

It went… surprisingly well. Zorian was a little worried, since they were making this attempt only a few

days into the restart and the preparations had been made in a considerable rush. He’d had to take a

potion of vigilance and miss a night of sleep entirely in order to finish constructing everything in time,

so he was technically doing this while staying awake for more than 24 hours.

They only had two significant complications. One was that some of the soldiers inside the ship had

barricaded themselves inside a storage room and placed high-level mental wards on themselves

after they figured out how Zorian was overrunning the crew so easily. Since Zach and Zorian

couldn’t use anything too destructive for fear of damaging the ship, this made the resulting situation

a bit of a chore to resolve in a timely manner. Thankfully, the golem bodies of Zorian’s simulacrums

were capable of taking considerable abuse, so Zorian simply sent them in to swarm the soldiers with

no regards to countering attacks. The result were two simulacrums with seriously damaged torsos

and one that was missing both of his legs, but the problem was solved and the damaged

simulacrums could still crew the ship just fine… though the legless one kept whining to Zorian about

his predicament.

The other was that once every simulacrum and missing part was in its place and they tried to take

off, the airship wouldn’t budge. It turned out that someone had installed an additional safeguard that

none of the people Zorian had interrogated had been aware of, and Zorian was forced to frantically

search for it while Zach repelled constant assaults on the ship from the reorganized Aranhali soldiers

outside. Thankfully, Zorian eventually found the section the safeguard was in. Unfortunately, it was

inside an engine regulation section, and integrated into it too deeply and too subtly for Zorian to

remove it cleanly in the time they had left. Aranhali battlemages were no doubt going to start

teleporting in any time soon, and then they’d be forced to abort the attempt. Thus, Zorian just

torched the entire mechanism, allowing them to take off but permanently crippling some of the ship’s

engines.

Now the airship was in the air, rapidly distancing itself from the construction site as it flew in the

direction of the Xlotic interior. However, it was considerably slower than it should have been and

there was another Aranhali airship chasing after them in pursuit. Zorian had no idea how that airship

had gotten on the scene so quickly. Maybe it had just happened to be in the area when they made

their attempt?

In any case, the two of them were currently in the main control room, trying to figure things out.

While they had done their homework before coming here and had a rough idea of what operating the

Pearl of Aranhal involved, it was one thing to have a theoretical knowledge of how something

worked and quite another to actually put it into practice.

“You know, this thing is harder and less exciting to pilot than I thought it would be,” Zach said idly,

poking and prodding the various levers and buttons on the control panel in front of him.

“I do know,” Zorian told him, a little grumpily. He was rapidly becoming aware of why Aranhali plans

called for a dedicated navigator that would focus fully on charting a ship’s course. He was so fobbing

off this job to a simulacrum the next time they did this… “Just focus on keeping the flight engines

running and be glad you’re not in charge of navigation like I am.”

“I’m not so sure your job is that much harder than mine, considering you wrecked half the ship in

order to get us in the air,” Zach remarked.

“It wasn’t half of the ship!” Zorian protested.

Zach laughed at him.

“So easy to rile up,” Zach said mirthfully. “Anyway, whoever designed this stuff should have really

been pulled aside and told to cut down a little on the mysterious dials and counters. He should have

put in some kind of magic panel or an illusion projector that would give you information in a more

understandable form. Would that really be so hard?”

“I think you have a skewed image of how easy that kind of thing is,” Zorian remarked. “It’s neither

cheap nor easy, and it would make it really inconvenient to fix things if something goes wrong. Dials

and counters are simple to make and fix.”

“I guess,” Zach conceded. “It’s still annoying that we’re not even able to see the Aranhali airship

pursuing us. One would think that an option to see a pursuing enemy would be one of the core

features put into a control room. I should be able to say… I don’t know, something like ‘on screen!’,

and have an image of the enemy projected on these windows in front of us.”

He gestured towards the large, clear windows that offered a breathtaking view of the outside world.

Currently they could see nothing except the clear sky and the distant horizon, which sounded a little

useless but at least it assured them they were flying straight, weren’t going to ram into anything and

that the weather was pleasant enough to fly in. Pretty much what these windows were intended for,

Zorian was sure.

“That would be kind of useful, actually,” Zorian agreed. “And while the airship itself isn’t nearly so

convenient…”

He quickly performed three different divination spells, created a large illusionary screen in the air in

front of them and then cast the final spell to integrate all of these into a semi-unified whole.

The illusionary screen rippled with prismatic colors for a second before settling into a three part

screen. Two of them showed a scried image of the pursuing airship in different angles. The third one

gave them a downward view from a vantage point high above the Pearl of Aranhal, allowing them to

easily grasp the position of the enemy airship in relation to themselves.

“Nice,” Zach praised.

The other Aranhal airship was larger and more heavily-built than them. It had a more typical cylinder

shape, and had a handful of cannons sticking out of its hull. The Pearl of Aranhal, on the other hand,

was entirely unarmed. Even if they did have cannons of their own, they couldn’t use them, as they

lacked the qualified gunners to make use of them.

Zorian wasn’t feeling very threatened, though. Despite the damage to its flight engines, the Pearl of

Aranhal was still slightly faster than the other airship. The design was really proving its worth there.

Gradually, minute after minute, hour after hour, they were pulling away from the other airship.

Additionally, Zorian had diverted one of his simulacrums to see if something could be done about the

damage he had done to the ship’s flight engines, and it seemed the answer was yes. In another two

hours or so, their speed would shoot up and their pursuers would be left in the dust.

“Uh, not sure if you noticed it yet, but there is another airship in front of us,” Zach said, pointing at a

distant dot that had yet to enter into the range of their scrying screen but could be seen through the

mundane window of the control room. “Do you think they’re here by coincidence or…?”

Crap.

Some frantic divinations quickly revealed that the third airship was most certainly not there on

accident. It was moving to intercept them, and both it and their old pursuer were making minor

course adjustments in order to box them in better, apparently coordinating their moves. The strange

thing was that the new airship wasn’t even owned by Aranhal – it belonged to the neighboring

country of Mezner. The two countries didn’t exactly have the best relations with one another, so

Zorian couldn’t help but privately wonder what Aranhal had promised to the other side in order to get

them to help out. A lot, probably.

They really, really didn’t want to lose the Pearl of Aranhal, it seemed.

- break -

Previously, when Zach and Zorian were securing the Pearl of Aranhal and fleeing the scene with

their ill-gotten gains, they had been trying to treat their enemies with as much mercy as possible.

The Aranhal soldiers posted on the construction site were perfectly justified in being outraged at

them, after all, so the two time travelers tried to disable their enemies non-lethally. To Zorian’s

knowledge, nobody had actually died during the theft itself, though some people did get seriously

injured and the golden triclopses might have killed someone after they had left. They even left the

pursuing airship be, preferring to flee rather than destroying them, as they very well could have.

However, having been caught between two airships like this meant they could no longer afford to

treat the situation with such velvet gloves.

Guided by Zach’s and Zorian’s hands, the Pearl of Aranhal promptly turned around to confront the

Aranhali airship that had been pursuing them. If they had to fight, it was better to tackle their enemies

one by one than wait for them to catch up to them together.

The Aranhali airship did not fear a confrontation. It knew that the Pearl of Aranhal was unarmed, and

that Zach and Zorian were running it on a skeleton crew. Thus, it simply continued onward towards

them, silently accepting the challenge.

It did not fire its cannons at them, though. Instead, six holes opened up in its hull and released a

dozen or so giant eagle riders towards them. The eagles were overloaded with passengers, visibly

straining under the weight of men they had to carry, but they flew fast nonetheless.

Simulacrum number two stood on the outer hull of the Pearl of Aranhal, studying the scene

dispassionately. His legs were glued onto the surface of the airship to keep the wind from sweeping

him away, and his golem body was unbothered by the cold. After sweeping through the incoming

enemy forces once, he sent his memory over to the original for study and then put them out of his

mind. They weren’t his problem. There were other simulacrums in charge of dealing with

defense. His job was a bit more… proactive.

He flexed his hands and shook a little, just to make sure the previous battles hadn’t left some hidden

injuries on him. The golem bodies that the original had made for them had been perfected to such a

degree by now that they felt completely indistinguishable from their original form. However, the

advantages of the golem bodies came with a hefty downside – if they were ever damaged, it was

very hard to repair them, requiring a lengthy and expensive process. Poor simulacrum number four

was still legless, for instance, though number two agreed with the original that his whining got really

old after a while. If a normal simulacrum had had both of his legs blown off, he would have dispersed

from the strain. The guy should be grateful he even still existed, not complaining about missing

limbs.

His little checkup done, he calmed his mind and focused on the task at hand: counter-attacking the

Aranhal airship.

They thought themselves safe because they thought their opponents had no weapons. But they

were so very wrong…

Simulacrum number two teleported to the enemy ship. Teleporting from one moving target to

another was tricky thing to pull off, and was beyond most teleporters… but it was entirely doable for

Zorian, and therefore for his simulacrums as well. He couldn’t teleport directly into the enemy airship,

but he didn’t have to – he teleported on top of the enemy airship’s hull, disintegrated a few panels to

create an opening for himself and then stepped inside.

He didn’t even try to hide himself as he advanced through the corridors towards the airship’s flight

engines. He didn’t have the time, and he had probably been discovered the moment he made a hole

in the hull, anyway.

Three armed crewmembers quickly found him.

“Halt! Stand d-”

He was ready for them. A severing whip cut them to pieces before they could so much as fire a shot.

He didn’t even slow down. He simply sped up, his divination spells having successfully mapped the

interior, showing him where to go to reach his destination.

The severing whip trailed after him, attached to his arm, and when he came upon another group of

people he used it to cut them down as well. It was a very efficient spell – the whip, once created,

was pretty cheap to maintain – but one that was rarely used due to its short range and the possibility

of the caster slicing their own limbs off if they didn’t have complete control over it. A bit brutal,

admittedly, but the culmination of his task here involved crashing the entire airship – most of these

people would end up dead in the end, no matter how you sliced it.

A hail of bullets impacted his chest but he simply ignored it, not even bothering to shield against

them. His golem body was tough, able to shrug off minor attacks like those with ease. Spending

mana to defend against things like that would be a waste.

When a dazzling, spinning bolt of fire swerved around the corner to slam into him, though… that he

shielded against. The explosion was massive, blowing off all nearby walls and setting the air ablaze.

If simulacrum number two had to breathe, this would have been a pretty devastating opener. Even

as it was, it knocked him a little off-balance… and the mage that cast that spell soon rounded the

corner to finish him off, before the aftershocks had the chance to die down.

The man moved incredibly quickly, using some strange telekinetic magic to ‘skate’ across the floor at

high speeds. He was big and muscular, sported an impressive mustache, and wielded a large saber

in his hand. Not a weapon Zorian was used to facing, as most mages avoided close-quarter fighting

if they could help it.

The enemy mage immediately charged at the simulacrum using that strange skating movement

magic, silent and grim. He swung the saber in his hands towards the simulacrum, its edge lighting up

with an ominous red glow that made it clear he wasn’t dealing with a simple steel blade.

Number two admitted he had been caught off guard a little… but only a little.

He performed a short-range teleport to get behind the man, avoiding his charge, and then fired a trio

of attack spells at him. Instead of stopping and turning, however, the man skated along the walls and

ceiling of the corridor, keeping all of his speed and momentum. He even used that strange saber of

his to harmlessly dispel the first spell Zorian directed his way – a force lance that Zorian had sent at

him in hopes of breaking his momentum by forcing him to shield. The simulacrum had to admit that

was pretty impressive.

The second spell, however, was a soul magic attack – a short-range wave of ghostly force that

minutely disturbed the connection of the soul with its body, causing a wave of nausea and vertigo in

those affected. The spell was weak, and it could be greatly attenuated by just about any shield spell,

but since the man trusted his saber over a classical defense spell he was hit by the wave at full

blast. He stumbled for just a moment, but that moment of weakness was enough for Zorian to launch

his third attack on him.

The severing whip struck like a viper, severing the man’s head from his shoulders in one fell swoop.

Simulacrum number two stared at the dead body for a few seconds in total silence, before taking the

man’s saber for later examination and continuing on his way.

He still had an airship to crash.

- break -

The battle between the Pearl of Aranhal and the two opposing airships got increasingly heated as

time went by. At first, the two attackers were aiming to recapture the ship mostly intact, and thus

attempted to board them with soldiers and mages. However, when Zach and Zorian had sent their

simulacrums to wreak havoc inside the enemy airships, trying to bring them down from the inside,

and then repelled several boarding attempts despite their numerical disadvantage, that attitude

began to change. They started firing their cannons at them, and then began lobbing increasingly

deadly artillery spells their way, forcing Zach and Zorian to spend a lot of their mana on defense.

When it became obvious that Zorian’s simulacrum inside their airship could not be stopped, the

Aranhali airship tried to ram them out of spite before going down… sadly, they made the Pearl of

Aranhal too well, allowing Zach and Zorian to maneuver out of their way long enough for simulacrum

number two to destroy the enemy airship’s flight cores and send it crashing into the ground below.

Finding itself alone against them, the Mezneri airship then chose to simply flee. Unlike their Aranhal

‘allies’, they had no reason to pursue this to the bitter end. Zach and Zorian let them run, and simply

breathed a sigh of relief before continuing on their way. Keeping a massive vessel like the Pearl of

Aranhal intact in the face of double aggression had strained even them, and the airship had not

gotten out of battle unscathed. Thankfully, none of the damage was critical, and further pursuers

wouldn’t be able to catch up to them.

Indeed, for the next few days, they had been blissfully free of any enemy going after them. The fact

that they were flying over the desolate, trackless desert that covered the interior of northern Miasina

probably had a lot to do with that. The only dangers were an occasional pair of desert drakes that

got too curious for their own good and tried to fly closer to check them out. It gave them quite a

scare, because they had initially mistaken them for dragons when they had spotted them in the

distance, but they were easy to chase off otherwise.

A bigger problem turned out to be locating an accessible Bakora Gate. They wanted to find one

before continuing towards the Ziggurat of the Sun, to make it easier to gain access to the ziggurat in

future restarts. Unfortunately, the maps of known Bakora Gates in the area turned out to be really

outdated and unreliable. This area had been hit hard by the Cataclysm, and almost no humans lived

here anymore. Some of the gates were just gone, possibly destroyed in one of the many wars that

had swept through the area as the desert spread northward. Or maybe they never existed, and the

mapmakers had put them there based on faulty sources. Some were buried under the sand and

gravel and thus unusable for their purposes. Some were there, but not quite in the area specified by

the maps – the mapmakers had only known the general area where the gate was located and made

an ‘educated guess’ about the exact location instead of going there to actually check things.

Apparently mapmakers had been less concerned about quality control in the past. A lot less.

Still, they managed to find a suitable Bakora Gate after five days of flying around the desert. The

time wasn’t entirely wasted, in any case – Zorian took advantage of his unrestricted access to the

airship’s internals to inspect it in detail. He also took some of the equipment apart to see how it

worked before putting it back together again, although he was forced to stop when Zach complained

he would ‘break things even worse than he already had’.

In any case, once they had settled down on a Bakora Gate to use, they grounded the Pearl of

Aranhal in the area before re-establishing contact with Eldemar. Zach had left one of his

simulacrums there, so he could open a dimensional passage for them the same way Zorian used to

do… except that he couldn’t contact his simulacrum telepathically through the soul, so they had to

wait for a pre-arranged time of day instead of doing it on a whim.

There were a lot of things they had to do back in Eldemar. First of all, they had to secure the

cooperation of the Silent Doorway Adepts in order to obtain the password of the Bakora Gate they

had claimed. Their research into the method of operating the Bakora Gate had greatly improved the

speed and reliability of the aranea opening ritual, but they still needed the web’s cooperation in order

to make use of them. Thankfully, convincing the Silent Doorway Adepts to ally with them was a lot

easier these days – the perfected opening ritual and the many new gate passwords they had

obtained over the restarts made their words carry considerable weight. It usually took only a few

days before the Silent Doorway Adepts were ready to work with them.

Secondly, they had to organize an expedition towards the Ziggurat of the Sun. Since the place was a

Sulrothum stronghold, they couldn’t just fly in there as they pleased. They had a brand new airship,

but Sulrothum could all fly. They had to scout the area, see if they could get Alanic on board, repair

the Pearl of Aranhal and Zorian’s simulacrum-golems and then come up with a plan of approach

after they had seen what they were working with.

Thus, Zach and Zorian reluctantly left their new airship out there in the desert, guarded only by a few

simulacrums, while they went back to Eldemar to prepare things.

Hopefully nobody would try and take it while they were occupied elsewhere.

- break -

The room was packed. Everyone who was a part of their ‘conspiracy’, as Zach called it, was there:

Kael, Taiven, Xvim, Alanic, Daimen… and Silverlake.

Silverlake had never taken part in these kinds of group meetings in the past. While they had

managed to convince her the time loop was real and come to an agreement with her, she clearly

didn’t trust them very much. She instructed them in pocket dimension creation and she worked with

them to decipher the nature of the primordial prisons and the manner in which they were connected

to the time loop reality and the real world… but she also kept trying to covertly spy on them and she

was leaving coded messages to her future iterations inside her notes. Zorian couldn’t figure out what

those coded messages were saying but he was sure they were there, even if Silverlake kept

insisting he was just paranoid and making mountains out of molehills. She also stubbornly refused to

make use of the time loop to work on her youth potion, but Zach and Zorian cared a lot less about

that than she seemed to think.

In any case, the result of all this was that Zach and Zorian were both leery about trusting her too

much and kept keeping her out of their greater plans and group meeting as such. However, that kind

of thing couldn’t go on forever and it was becoming obvious that waiting for Silverlake to find

something encouraging in the notes of her predecessors was an idle dream. They could only hope

that if they extended a little more trust towards her (even though she sure hadn’t done anything to

deserve that) she would eventually reciprocate.

Besides, their plans for the current restart were extensive and important enough that it didn’t feel

right to exclude anyone out of the planning sessions.

It was interesting, though… Zorian had expected Silverlake to make a remark about Kael, since the

morlock boy had indicated they had some kind of prior knowledge of each other when he had sent

Zorian to talk to her, but Silverlake didn’t seem to notice him. It wasn’t that she was deliberately

ignoring him as far as Zorian could tell; she just didn’t seem to perceive him as important or familiar.

Perhaps she just didn’t connect the person with the face in front of her? Kael had no doubt been a

child when they had last met, and he was a teenager now…

Regardless, while Silverlake did not recognize Kael, she definitely recognized someone else: Alanic.

What was more, Alanic clearly recognized her as well. They faced off against each other for a full

five seconds after they saw one another, just… staring at each other. Not saying anything. Then they

looked away and pretended nothing happened. Since they didn’t say anything, Zorian pretended not

to notice.

Currently, everyone was staring at Zach and Zorian with a complicated expression, momentarily

struck speechless.

“That was you!?” Daimen exclaimed incredulously. “You’re the ones who did that airship theft that all

the newspapers are talking about!?”

“That’s us, yup!” Zach said, nodding proudly. “We’re awesome.”

“That’s…” Daimen said, grasping for words.

“Reckless,” Xvim supplied.

“Stupid,” Taiven offered.

“Your idea,” Zorian said.

“Yeah, exact–” Daimen began, before registering what Zorian had said. “Wait, what?”

“Yup,” Zorian nodded seriously. “Totally your idea.”

“I assume you had a reason for doing that, then?” Alanic prompted.

“Of course,” Zach laughed. “We had the best reason. Gather round, children, Grandpa Zach is going

to tell you all a story…”

Over the next half an hour, Zach told everyone involved what the point behind the airship theft was.

Zach being Zach, he focused more on describing the exciting parts of the airship battle than the

strategic goal of the theft, or their reasoning, but he did eventually manage to get the point across.

They needed the airship in order to locate all the Key pieces in time. Without the Pearl of Aranhal,

travelling across the Xlotic desert to reach the Ziggurat of the Sun would probably require multiple

restarts due to the hostile environment and a lack of human towns where they could hire teleporters

at. Additionally, they eventually needed to reach Blantyrre to collect one of the pieces, and traversing

the vast amount of ocean that separates Blantyrre from the nearest human landmass in less than a

month would be nearly impossible through alternative methods.

“It’s more than that, though,” Zach continued. “Not only is the airship we stole absolutely critical in

getting us out of this time looping reality, it is also important practice for another theft that needs to

happen.”

“More thefts, mister Noveda?” Xvim asked him, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

“Well, yes,” Zach said. “After all, the dagger is held inside Eldemar’s royal treasury…”

“Oh heavens…” Taiven groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Zorian, are you seriously going to

break into the royal vaults?”

Kael, who was sitting next to her, chuckled quietly.

“He kind of has to, doesn’t he?” he said, sounding a little amused.

“Since you’re mentioning this now, I’m guessing you intend to make the attempt at the royal treasury

in this very restart, then?” Alanic asked.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “Additionally, we also intend to try and wrest the crown from Quatach-Ichl,

the ancient lich fighting for the Ibasans. Potentially, we could gather all but one of the Key pieces in

this very restart. I doubt we’ll succeed in getting them all this time – hell, I wouldn’t even be surprised

if we fail to get any of them – but it’s good practice and it should at least tell us what areas we’re

lacking in and what we need to work on to succeed next time.”

“I see,” Alanic sighed. “I will be frank – I am not very comfortable with condoning such an act of

treason. Considering what is at stake here, I will not stand in your way… but you should not count on

my help in this regard.”

“Ha ha!” Silverlake suddenly cackled. “So righteous and serious! This is too funny! I still remember

how you came to me back then, a budding little necromancer full of ambition and anger, asking for

my help! It’s really hard to reconcile that memory with what you ended up becoming. A necromancer

and a thief became a fervent priest and a patriot, now I’ve really seen everything in the world…”

Alanic stiffened slightly at her words and then gave her an angry glare. Silverlake just grinned

cheekily at him. Taking a deep breath, Alanic rose from his seat and gave Zach and Zorian a frosty

look.

“I think it would be best for everyone if I did not participate in this meeting anymore… or any other

meeting where you planned how to best rob Eldemar’s royal family,” Alanic said. “And while I realize

more than anyone that desperation can make one do things they rather wouldn’t, I have to warn you

that you’re making a mistake by working with this old ghoul. You’re playing with fire. She will stab

you in the back in a heartbeat if she thought it would benefit her.”

“Ah, I love you too, my little necromancer,” Silverlake said sweetly.

Alanic did not bother to respond to her, or even look at her. He simply turned around and left the

room. Not quite stormed off, but it wasn’t quite far from it.

Zorian resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. It always had to be something, didn’t it?

A long, uncomfortable silence descended on the scene. Only Silverlake seemed entirely comfortable

with the situation, humming happily to herself and idly examining one of the experimental potions

Kael had made. The meeting was happening in one of the alchemical workshops Zorian had made

for the white-haired boy, so there were quite a few of them lying around.

“So,” Silverlake eventually began. “You were saying something about an ancient lich?”

Chapter 080

Enemies

Although the Xlotic desert was usually depicted as an endless sea of sand, with only the

occasionally broken up rocky outcroppings or secluded oases, its actual landscape was far more

complex than that. There was plenty of sand, yes, but also vast fields of rock, barren hills and

mountain ranges, remnants of dried-up lakes and riverbeds, and old Ikosian ruins scattered all over

the place. And that was just the more mundane landmarks. Zorian had heard that there was a forest

composed out of stony, seemingly fossilized trees in the deep desert, blooming with life and

greenery during the rare times it rained in the area before reverting back to its seemingly lifeless

appearance after a few weeks. Then there were the so-called ‘water volcanos’ – massive geysers of

boiling water that occasionally erupted from the Dungeon in some regions, flooding the area around

them for a brief while.

The area around the Ziggurat of the Sun wasn’t as unusual as those two examples, but it was still an

unusual place. First of all, this was once a famous temple complex of the Ikosian Empire, and a

great many ruins were scattered around the area – ruins of temples, lesser ziggurats, military forts,

private estates and so on. Many of these ruins had been claimed by the local sulrothum, but many

more had been overrun by various desert-adapted monsters, which had moved into them and had

dug themselves in too thoroughly for anyone to dislodge them. Secondly, there was a seasonal river

passing through the area – although it only persisted for part of a year, it was enough to make the

area relatively vibrant compared to its immediate surroundings. Finally, the local underworld was

particularly extensive and featured a large underground lake that no doubt contributed to making the

land far livelier than it realistically should have been this deep in the Xlotic interior.

Zach and Zorian were currently traveling through this land on foot, warily observing their

surroundings. Their journey had been relatively free of dangers thus far, but that could change in a

flash if they weren’t careful. The heat was also slowly starting to get to them. Their comfort spells

had done a fine job of warding off sunstroke and the worst of the desert heat, but this sort of magic

was not all-powerful and Xlotic was quite an extreme environment.

It made Zorian wish they had just arrived here in their pretty new airship. Unfortunately, that hadn’t

been an option. They were coming here to try and negotiate with the sulrothum for the right of

passage, and the devil wasps would no doubt react badly to the sight of an incoming airship. Most

likely they would just attack the vessel immediately, ruining any chance of successful negotiations.

Well, if Zorian was being honest with himself, the negotiations were not very likely to be successful

anyway. Although sulrothum were known to have peaceful interactions with humans on occasion,

they had a reputation of being an extremely fierce and violent species, and there was a long history

of bloody conflict between them and humanity. On top of that, sulrothum were incapable of

producing the necessary sounds to mimic human speech, and humans could not speak sulrothum

either, making communication between the two species difficult.

Even though the odds of a peaceful outcome were low, though, Zorian still felt they had to try. No

doubt he and Zach could forcibly take the ziggurat from the sulrothum if they really applied

themselves, but there were hundreds of these things living there and this was their home. This was

where they kept their children, their food stockpiles and water reserves, their workshops and trade

goods… they were not going to give the place up easily. They might even decide to fight to the

death, which would force Zorian to deal with sulrothum children and non-combatants somehow. He’d

rather avoid that headache if at all possible.

“This should be enough, no?” Zach suddenly said. He hopped onto a nearby rocky outcropping and

quickly scanned their surroundings. “I think we’re far enough into their territory. Any further and they

might attack us on principle. Though really, I still think we’re going about this the wrong way.

Sulrothum are famed for their savagery, no? I bet smacking them around a bit until they’re ready to

talk would produce better results than just approaching them peacefully. Show them we’re serious,

you know?”

“You might yet get your wish,” Zorian said, performing a brief sweep of the area with his mind sense,

soul perception and his plain two eyes. There was some sort of snake hiding beneath a nearby

patch of thorny bushes, but it was absolutely terrified of them and had no intention of attacking them,

so Zorian ignored it. “If the wasps attack us immediately or refuse to even entertain our offer, we’ll go

with your plan.”

“Ha. Great,” Zach grinned, before retrieving a water bottle from his backpack and emptying it on top

of his head. He sighed in relief. “Ahh, I needed that…”

After some thought, Zorian decided to follow his example and did the same.

It did make him feel a lot better, he had to admit.

A minute or so of comfortable silence ensued.

“Shall we?” Zorian eventually asked.

“Yes,” Zach nodded. “Fire away.”

Zorian performed one of the many spells that produced a signal flare in some fashion – in this case,

a brilliant red star that released a high-pitched ‘scream’ as it flew through the air – and fired it straight

into the sky above him, announcing their presence to everyone for miles around.

They didn’t have to wait long. Not even fifteen minutes after Zorian had fired the flare, a trio of black

dots appeared on the horizon. Their features were kind of hard to discern because they were

approaching them from a direction that let the sun illuminate their backs, but Zorian was pretty sure

he was looking at an incoming sulrothum patrol.

Soon, this suspicion was proven correct.

They were louder than Zorian thought they would be. The drone of their wings, beating several times

a second to keep their large bodies aloft, was audible from a considerable distance. It kind of made

Zorian wonder why they even bothered to try and mask their approach when anyone who wasn’t

deaf could hear them coming. Regardless, as the sulrothum patrol got closer, Zach and Zorian

shifted their posture in preparation for a possible attack. They didn’t think the sulrothum would just

attack them with no provocation – if nothing else, they’d have brought more tribe members if they

were going to be hostile right off the bat – but it was best to be prepared for everything.

Their landing was anything but graceful. Instead of gradually slowing down, the sulrothum dropped

to the ground with reckless speed, impacting the gravel-covered earth in front of Zach and Zorian

with considerable force and kicking up dust and loose stones in every direction. The shockwave

even reached the place where Zach and Zorian were standing, though the weather shields they had

protecting them simply deflected these stray irritants to the side with no action required on their part.

Well. The meeting had barely even begun and already Zorian was starting to dislike the damn

wasps.

In any case, with the sulrothum right in front of them, Zorian could finally take a good look at one. He

had seen the descriptions and illustrations of them in the books, naturally, but that sort of thing really

couldn’t compare to seeing something in person. They were big – smaller than the three meter long

giants that the books described, but not that much smaller – but also very spindly and fragile-looking.

That impression was misleading, he knew – sulrothum were said to be strong enough to tear a man

limb from limb with their bare hands and tough as coffin nails. Black, glossy chitin covered their

wasp-like forms, and their faces were very much insect-like – alien and inscrutable. Their eyes, as

black as their bodies and multifaceted like those of most insects, gave away nothing of their inner

thoughts. They had a pair of short antennae on top of their heads, though, and these twitched madly

in their general direction, revealing their agitation. Zorian had trouble interpreting their thoughts and

emotions, alien as they were to his sensibilities, but he could tell that the trio was feeling twitchy and

paranoid, ready to either attack them or flee at the slightest sign of aggression.

All three of them carried spears. They were appropriately sized for a creature of sulrothum size and

strength, which meant they were pretty gigantic by human standards. The size and weight alone

made those spears a significant danger, even though they looked somewhat crudely made. In

addition to these close-quarters weapons, each sulrothum also carried a handful of smaller spears

strapped to their backs. These were the notorious ‘heavy javelins’ that sulrothum used as their

ranged attack method. Generally, every sulrothum raid opened with them hurling a storm of these

javelins at their targets before closing in to clash with their foes face-to-face. Sulrothum bodies were

strong and durable, and they did not fear close-quarters combat… but even so, they did not balk at

softening up their targets a little before closing in.

Somehow, the spears and javelins made the sulrothum trio far more threatening than they should

appear. Objectively speaking, the three devil wasps in front of them did not pose a significant threat

to Zach and Zorian, but seeing them clutching those spears in their hands was a stark reminder that

they were dealing with creatures that were not just sapient, but tool-users as well. As a rule, sapient

monsters did not employ tools much – other than lizardmen and a few other species, most of them

basically lived like animals. Their innate abilities were potent enough that technology largely seemed

pointless to them. Why use a spear when your claws are sharper? Why build a house when the cold

and the rain hardly hurt you? Sulrothum, though, went to the trouble of creating tools and homes that

made use of their natural advantages and made them more potent than they would otherwise be.

They shouldn’t take them too lightly.

“Hello,” Zorian greeted with as much friendliness as he could manage, when standing in front of a

trio of giant, sapient, aggressive wasps. “Do you understand me?”

He really hoped they did. Sulrothum tribes usually made sure they had at least a couple of members

that could understand the local human language, but this tribe lived quite a distance away from any

major human power so it was possible they felt no need to bother. If they were ignorant of any

human tongue, or only understood a dialect that Zorian himself did not speak, they were in trouble.

Telepathic communication between entities that did not speak a common language was a crude and

often unpleasant thing, doubly so if the people involved were as different in their perception of the

world as humans and sulrothum were.

The three sulrothum erupted into a storm of chattering, punctuated by an occasional buzz of their

wings and mad flailing of their antennae. However, they did not bother to face each other to do so,

their attention on Zach and Zorian never wavering and their spears pointed firmly in their direction.

Finally, the sulrothum on the left stepped forth towards them before twirling his spear theatrically and

stabbing into the ground. He thrust all four of his hands towards them, palms open, in a gesture that

was probably supposed to prove that he really was unarmed.

Then he made a series of hand gestures before leaning back and expectantly waiting for a

response.

Zorian frowned. Was this how the sulrothum usually communicated with humans? It would make

sense, he supposed. Most mages weren’t as proficient in mind magic as Zorian, and Ikosian

spellcasting language already employed a lot of hand gestures so this method of communication

wouldn’t be totally alien for a lot of people. Plus, sulrothum hands were remarkably similar to human

ones, despite being giant wasps.

“Well that’s a bit of a problem,” Zach commented lightly.

Zorian ignored him.

“I do not understand that,” Zorian said, speaking loudly and slowly. “Please think your responses at

me in human language. I will pick it up from your thoughts.”

The sulrothum froze for a moment before flattening his antennae over his forehead and hissing at

him, sounding remarkably like an angry housecat.

“I think you got him a little angry,” Zach supplied helpfully from the side.

Yeah, thanks Zach. Real helpful of you.

The sulrothum reached to his side and grasped one of the several items tied to his waist – a small

bundle of herbs and bones, wrapped in snake leather. All three had a couple of trinkets like that

hanging off their bodies, but until now Zorian had not put too much thought into that. In any case, the

sulrothum proceeded to wave the bundle in front of him, as if trying to ward himself against Zorian’s

magic. Sadly for him, the bundle didn’t really do anything as far as Zorian could tell.

Zorian was mystified at the action before it occurred to him that this might be the equivalent of one of

those silly ‘folk charms’ that old grannies and street sellers sometimes peddled to children, travelers

and the like.

“I mean you no harm. I really don’t,” Zorian said, as soothingly as he could manage. It didn’t seem to

help. The sulrothum in front of him just waved his little charm harder and the other two sulrothum

were starting to get more agitated as well. “And really, your thoughts are safe! I can only see what

you think in human terms, nothing else!”

This was effectively true. While Zorian could indeed see into the sulrothum mind, even their

emotions were a pain to puzzle out, much less their surface thoughts. If he wanted to be able to read

their minds, he would have to invest months or years of work to do so, much like he did with aranea.

They didn’t have time for that.

The sulrothum in front of him was silent for a few seconds. Then, seemingly realizing that his ‘magic

charm’ was not being effective, he stashed it back on his belt and shifted his posture into a more

confident stance.

[Speak,] the sulrothum ‘said’ in his mind.

“Fine,” Zorian nodded. “First, let me introduce ourselves. I am Zorian and the person next to me is

Zach. May I know who I’m talking to?”

[No,] the sulrothum replied.

Ugh.

[I will not give you my name, sorcerer,] the devil wasp clarified after a few seconds. [Everyone knows

that names have power and that your kind can use them against us.]

What? This was news to Zorian…

Well, whatever. He would just think of the sulrothum in front of him as ‘Buzzkill’ for now, then.

“We seek passage through your territory and wish to present gifts to your leaders,” Zorian said. He

didn’t mention anything about searching the ziggurat yet, since simply getting inside would give them

useful information. At the very least they would find out if the Key piece was actually there if they

could get in, due to the detection ability of their markers.

[Out of the question,] Buzzkill said resolutely. [You are not of the tribe.]

“Do you not accept guests in your home?” Zorian frowned. “I know we are different, but surely there

is some kind of tradition of hospitality in your tribe?”

Buzzkill’s hands twitched into the beginning of a gesture, before he caught himself and laboriously

started forming thoughts for Zorian to detect. The language he spoke was a strange dialect of

Ikosian, possibly an archaic version of some local dialect, but Zorian had gotten relatively proficient

in Xlotic dialects by now, and could puzzle out his meanings easily enough. It helped that they

weren’t having some particularly high-minded discussion here.

[A wise one does not simply let strangers walk into his home,] Buzzkill stated. [We would need to

make sure you are friends of the tribe. Signs would have to be consulted and proper rituals

observed.]

“I… see,” Zorian said uncertainly. “And how long would that last?”

[Many days,] Buzzkill said. Zorian could be wrong, but he thought he detected a note of

schadenfreude in his thoughts.

Zorian was silent for a while, considering the situation. A few more questions to Buzzkill regarding

this whole process of ‘consulting the signs’ and whatnot did not yield anything except vague

explanations and refusals to elaborate. It was all very secret and not to be spoken about with

outsiders, apparently.

His questioning was eventually interrupted by an incoming telepathic message, however – one

coming from Zach. He may not be psychic like Zorian was, but telepathy was not beyond the reach

of normal mages – it was just rarely used because it required a great deal of training to use, even if

one knew the relevant spells, and because of trust concerns. Now, thanks to the extensive training

of his mental defenses over the last dozen or so restarts, Zach had lost some of his paranoia

regarding mind magic, allowing them to silently exchange thoughts when the situation called for it.

Who knew, maybe one day Zach would actually let him perform a detailed examination of his mind

to see if Red Robe had left any more surprises in there…

[I’m guessing things aren’t going too well?] Zach asked.

[Hard to say,] Zorian said. [Strictly speaking, he didn’t say no, just that it would require a lot of time

and effort, and probably bribes, for us to be granted entry into their territory… but I don’t know.]

[Huh. Alright,] Zach said.

“Hey, big guy!” Zach suddenly spoke out loud, causing all three sulrothum to turn their heads

towards him. “Be honest. You don’t really intend to let us meet your leaders, do you?

Buzzkill shook his wings a few times contemptuously, before laboriously forming words in his mind

again.

[It is not my place to decide that,] he said. [But I think not. We are wise to your ploys. Your kind is

dangerous and scheming, and you forever lust after this place. It was once yours, and you have

never come to terms with how it changed hands.]

Any further discussion was rendered obsolete when Zach and Zorian noticed a swarm of black dots

on the horizon. There were at least 20 of them and they were coming straight towards them.

[I advise you to turn and leave this place,] Buzzkill said, sounding much more confident now. [You

are not welcome here.]

Silently, Zach and Zorian seemed to have come to an agreement. They both immediately launched

offensive spells at the sulrothum in front of them.

The three sulrothum reacted quickly, probably having expected hostilities to break out soon. Buzzkill

wrenched his spear out of the ground and charged straight at them with a loud, screeching battle cry

while the two sulrothum in the back reached towards the javelins strapped at their back. Neither of

them accomplished their goal – a massive wave of telekinetic force and cutting wind erupted from

Zach, smashing straight into them and sending them away like bowling pins. A human would have

been reduced to bloody chunks if caught in that kind of attack head on, but the three sulrothum

survived mostly intact.

Before they could reorganize, Zorian fired a pair of force javelins at them, each one carrying a

different amount of damaging force in itself. The purpose of this battle wasn’t so much to kill the

three sulrothum – they could have done that in the initial salvo if they so wished – but rather to

puzzle out the limits of their protective abilities and intimidate the tribe somewhat so that they were

more likely to negotiate when they come in force later. With that in mind, Zach and Zorian proceeded

to throw the three sulrothum around like rag dolls, breaking their wings and limbs in the process and

making sure that the incoming sulrothum forces could see the overwhelming power they

represented.

Eventually the incoming sulrothum swarm finally arrived at the scene and it was time to leave. Zach

and Zorian tanked one of the javelin salvos from the group, just to show they could, and then

teleported away.

But they would be back, and they would bring an army with them next time.

- break -

“Alright, now that everyone is here, we can officially begin,” Zorian said, giving everyone present a

cursory look. “I know that some of you have certain… misgivings about some of the people present,

but it means a lot to me and Zach that you were willing to come here regardless.”

He gave Alanic and Silverlake a look while saying that, as they were pretty much the people this was

directed at.

After Alanic had abruptly left the meeting last time, the meeting had been wrapped up soon

afterwards. It felt wrong to just continue the discussion without someone as critical as Alanic being

present, so they mostly spent the meeting bringing Silverlake up to speed in regards to their plans

and activities.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, brat. Personally, I thought the last meeting was a fun little

reunion,” Silverlake said. “It’s not my fault Alanic decided to be a baby for no reason. Really, one

would think a grown man like him would be at peace with his own past by now. Not to mention–”

“Silverlake, please,” Zorian interrupted her with a long-suffering sigh. “We’re here to talk about

Quatach-Ichl and how to tackle him, okay? Let’s leave these kinds of personal discussions for some

other time.”

Preferably never. He shot Alanic a grateful look for not rising to her bait and sparking another

confrontation. Alanic did not visibly react, simply pretending as if Silverlake did not exist.

“Indeed,” Xvim said, tapping his finger at the table speculatively. “I assume you have some sort of a

plan, already?”

“Only a basic outline,” Zorian said. “We definitely need to surprise him, and it should preferably be

done near the very end of the restart. Quatach-Ichl’s movements become increasingly predictable as

the date of the invasion approaches and most of the Ibasan resources are already committed

somewhere by that point, meaning that Quatach-Ichl will have trouble marshaling most of his

underlings to defend him or send them in pursuit of us if we can recover his crown. As for the actual

execution of the ambush… well, we first wanted to try catching him with a soul-severing bullet, since

that could end the fight immediately if it works.”

“Soul-severing… that’s the coin trick you used to disable him in the past, yes?” Xvim asked.

“I still can’t believe that actually worked,” Kael sighed. “I had to reread that part of your notes three

times to make sure I caught that correctly. I don’t know what my previous self was thinking, sending

you against an ancient lich armed with that. It shouldn’t have worked.”

“It was a pretty lucky win,” Zorian admitted. “It only worked because Quatach-Ichl did not see me as

a threat and thus decided to catch an object thrown at him in his hand instead of simply deflecting it

away or shielding against it. I doubt I could engineer such a situation artificially and there is no way a

coin is getting through his defenses during combat circumstances.”

“Yeah, no way,” Zach agreed. “I’ve tried to nail him with items in the past. No chance of him

overlooking something like that while you’re fighting him. He often actually sends thrown items right

back at you with a casual gesture. He is quite proficient with unstructured telekinesis.”

“I’m not sure I understand how this maneuver is possible,” Xvim admitted. “Unusual circumstances

aside, you employed an elementary piece of soul magic to shut down a lich. Liches are famous for

being fiendishly hard to deal with, so why did a thousand-year-old one fall so easily?”

“Because it wasn’t Kael’s little spell that exiled the lich’s soul back to his phylactery,” Silverlake said.

“It was his own soul defenses that did that. You may think that being vulnerable to a cheap trick like

this is a weakness, but imagine for a moment what would happen if that coin the brat used was a

fancy soul jar or the like.”

“His soul would get captured and his phylactery would be useless,” Xvim said. “I see. So liches like

him make their defenses incredibly sensitive, so that even the slightest soul disturbance causes their

souls to snap back to their phylactery.”

“Precisely,” Alanic said. “Losing a body and everything you had on your person is a blow to be sure,

but it pales to the possibility of having your soul captured.”

“Most people don’t carry a one-of-a-kind divine artifact like the crown of the first emperor,” Zach

noted.

“I’m sure Quatach-Ichl feels he can recover the crown from whoever claimed it off his… err, corpse,”

Zorian said. “Considering his level of power, he’s not too far from the truth.”

“Besides, what good are awesome magical items like that if you’re not allowed to make use of them

for fear of losing them?” Silverlake said. “I’d wear a fancy magical crown too, if I had one. Always

wanted to try playing a princess as a little girl…”

“Unsolicited childhood fantasies aside, I’d like to remind you two that all liches are automatically

powerful soul mages, and can adjust their soul defenses quite easily and rapidly,” said Alanic. “If you

hope to banish Quatach-Ichl’s soul back to his phylactery, you only have one attempt per restart to

do so. After that the lich will be expecting such a ploy and will likely take necessary precautions

against it.”

“What about going one step further and making an actual soul jar in order to capture Quatach-Ichl’s

soul?” Kael asked. “I mean, the last time Zorian tried this, he only had me to help and I’m… kind of a

beginner at this. With Alanic and Silverlake here… well, they’re clearly both very capable soul

mages, so perhaps they could make something more potent than that?”

Alanic and Silverlake shared a long, complex look before they both refocused on Kael again.

“No,” Alanic sighed, shaking his head sadly. “You are drastically overestimating our skills. Aside from

having your phylactery destroyed, the biggest danger to a lich is having your soul captured. They

spend a great deal of their energies making sure that can’t happen under any circumstances. An old,

experienced lich like Quatach-Ichl…”

“The only realistic way of dealing with him is destroying his phylactery,” Silverlake finished for him.

“Nothing else would work.”

“I see,” Kael said in a subdued manner.

“There is a reason why so many mages aim for lich-hood,” Silverlake noted. “As far as methods of

immortality go, having your very own resurrection point is hard to beat.”

“Being undead is no true immortality, merely a twisted reflection of one,” Alanic stated.

Silverlake harrumphed at him, but said nothing. Instead, she turned towards Zach and Zorian and

gave them a speculative look.

“What?” Zach asked.

“Did you two ever think about just… soulkilling Quatach-Ichl? You know, that trick the third time

traveler used on the aranea and such? It would neatly solve this problem, not just in this restart, but

in all subsequent ones as well.”

“We did,” Zach nodded slowly. “The conclusion was that we have to be very careful with that. The

headaches we had with Veyers had taught us that a person behind heavy wards is essentially

untraceable. If we soulkill Quatach-Ichl and it turns out he begins the restart behind some heavy

wards or a place that nobody knows about, the crown might become completely unrecoverable.”

“Hmm,” Silverlake hummed. “You should really try to track down his movements and bases some of

these days…”

“I’m going to have to agree with her on this,” Alanic said. “I know you say you’re stretched enough as

it is, but even a mere chance of ridding the world of such an ancient lich would be worth throwing

some effort in that direction. This is probably the best chance of anyone tracking down his phylactery

in the foreseeable future.”

“That’s easier to say than to actually put into practice,” Zach said, shaking his head.

A small silence descended at the scene, only broken up when Silverlake decided to clear her throat

and attract everyone’s attention to herself.

“In any case, I’ve done some digging in my personal records after you’ve explained the situation to

me… I think I have something that might help you take down Quatach-Ichl,” she said, pulling out a

weathered old scroll out of her bag.

“Oh?” Zach said eagerly. “Do tell.”

“It’s a trap field that prevents souls from escaping out of the area,” Silverlake said, throwing the scroll

in his direction. Zach caught it, fumbling slightly with the catch due to not expecting the move. “For

undead like Quatach-Ichl, it stops them from leaving until they shut down the ward. If you can lure

him into the field, it should give him trouble for a time at the very least. I heard he moves a lot around

the battlefield and loves to retreat to come back later. This ward is not nearly as obvious as an anti-

teleportation field, but effectively has the same effect as one on undead.”

Huh. That did sound very useful against Quatach-Ichl.

“Anyway, I would be of little use to you in the actual battle against a powerful lich like Quatach-Ichl,

but I can help you set up the battlefield beforehand,” Silverlake continued. “Aside from the spell I just

gave you, I also have a few other surprises, though none are as effective as that one. And while

Zorian is arguably a better warder than I am, he doesn’t have experience with these particular

spells.”

“I’m probably going to take you up on that offer,” Zorian said. This restart was going to get pretty

busy as their preparations approached completion, so any chance to offload some of his

responsibilities on someone else was useful. “Every little bit of help is useful. As for Xvim and Alanic,

I am hoping you two will help us battle Quatach-Ichl if the ambush fails.”

“Which it probably will,” Zach noted.

“Hush, child,” Silverlake chided him. “Don’t you know you will curse this whole endeavor with such

talk?”

“Just being realistic,” Zach shrugged. “I tangled with Quatach-Ichl the most out of anyone here, so I

feel I have the right to be a little pessimistic. Anyway, I actually have a suggestion of my own. I think

I have an idea about something we can do to better prepare for the eventual battle against Quatach-

Ichl.”

“And what would that be, mister Noveda?” Xvim asked.

“A practice fight!” Zach said with a cheerful grin. “I’ll play the role of Quatach-Ichl and you will all

cooperate and try to subdue me. Admittedly, I am not an ancient lich of unfathomable power and

experience, but I did recently become capable of creating my own simulacrums, so there is no

danger of me getting hurt in the fighting. You can think of me as a discount Quatach-Ichl, I guess.”

Zorian flinched a little at his description. This was such a bad idea…

“Zach,” he protested. “There is no warding scheme in existence that would be able to handle the

level of destruction involved in such–”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Alanic suddenly said. Zorian gave him an incredulous look. “I would like to

also invite Silverlake to participate in these exercises. Even if she doesn’t intend to participate in the

actual battle, these sort of mock fights would surely help her get a better perspective on what she is

dealing with and help her fine-tune her preparations…”

Oh come on!

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Silverlake said, scowling at him.

This sparked a loud fight between them, the two of them slinging barbs and thinly-veiled insults at

each other while Zorian’s mood steadily worsened.

[I hope you’re happy with yourself,] Zorian sent to Zach telepathically.

[It’s going to be great, you’ll see,] Zach sent him back, completely unapologetic.

Zorian looked at Alanic and Silverlake, who were still trying to out-talk each other, and then at Xvim,

who looked like he wanted to attack both of them to make them shut up. Kael had decided to flat-out

vacate the room at some point, which was probably smart of him. He was too weak to participate in

the sort of ‘practice fight’ Zach was suggesting and staying behind might mean he would get pulled

into the argument between Alanic and Silverlake.

“Yeah,” Zorian muttered to himself. “Great.”

- break -

In the end, despite Zorian cautioning against it, the group decided to hold the battle practice that

Zach suggested. Alanic obviously supported the idea, and he managed to goad Silverlake into

supporting it too in the end. Xvim, though annoyed with the way Alanic and Silverlake were acting,

felt it was a sensible idea… and was probably curious about the level of magical skill that Zach and

Zorian truly had, anyway.

Thankfully, the practice fight was not going to happen for a few more days, leaving Zorian time to

tangle with other issues. Mainly, this meant making preparations for the attack on the Ziggurat of the

Sun. Golems had to be made, terrain scouted and information on sulrothum gathered. Thankfully,

Alanic had agreed to help them out during the fighting, despite his disagreements with them over the

inclusion of Silverlake into the time looping ‘conspiracy’. Fighting pagan monsters that had seized a

religious monument of the faith, Alanic said, was a worthy task for a battle priest like him.

Unfortunately, having him gather a small army and having them assist in the endeavor, like he had

done in some of the previous restarts, was apparently not possible. Those people had been willing to

participate in secret operations on Eldemarian soil, but bringing them to the deepest stretches of the

Xlotic desert to fight the sulrothum was bound to backfire. They would demand explanations and

refuse to cooperate.

No, if Zach and Zorian wanted to have real people assisting them in their attack on the ziggurat, they

needed to hire mercenaries and factions in Xlotic itself – preferably in the region closest to the

Ziggurat of the Sun. As a bonus, such locals likely had first-hand information about sulrothum and

their battle tactics, having been fighting them for decades now.

At the moment, Zach and Zorian were sitting around an open air table in one of Cyoria’s fancier

taverns and discussing the issue. Zorian was slowly sipping his fruit juice, while Zach had ordered

the biggest keg of beer that Zorian had ever seen served in this kind of establishment. Zorian had

initially thought that the keg was undrinkable in any sort of reasonable time-frame, but Zach was

making a valiant effort to prove him wrong on that account.

The contrast between the two probably looked quite funny, because the other patrons occasionally

gave them funny glances and shook their heads in amusement.

“Anyway,” Zorian said, “the idea of consulting and hiring the locals for the fight against the sulrothum

is good, but I’m running into issues of language again. I acquired a decent grasp of various Xlotic

dialects by now, and Daimen and his connections help substantially, but this just isn’t enough when

I’m trying to actually hire guides, scholars, mercenaries and whatnot. I think we may need to find an

actual translator to help us out. I wonder if we can talk Zenomir into going on a trip to Xlotic with

us…”

“Bah. Why bring an old man like that when we can bring a hot girl instead?” Zach asked. “Neolu is

native to the region, and I bet she’d love to ditch school and go wander the world with us. Actually, I

don’t have to wonder – I know she’d like that because I used to do that sometimes. Just… tell her I’m

a time traveler and bring her along with me as I wandered the continent. Sometimes I’d bring others

along too, but most people aren’t willing to accept the whole ‘time traveler’ explanation as readily as

she…”

“Ah, I remember her,” Zorian said. “And you say she’s really easy to convince about time travel?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Zach nodded. “She asks for proof, of course, but that’s easy to give. I already

know more than enough to convince her to join us. Though admittedly she might be a little more

reluctant to run off with two boys than just one. I, uh… used to phrase my offer more like a romantic

getaway than a business transaction.”

Zorian sighed in exasperation. Then again, if he had been stuck in a time loop like Zach had been,

with no obvious danger pressing down on him, wouldn’t he do the same thing? He’d probably take

advantage of the time loop to go after a girl or two…

“Why don’t we first try to talk to her about this before we take it for granted that she’d want to go

along with this,” Zorian told him.

“At the very least she probably won’t mind getting us in contact with her family,” Zach said with a

shrug. “Her family is rich and in a bit of a political crisis right now, so it should be possible to acquire

their cooperation in exchange for helping them out with a problem or two. Finding us a translator or

two is the least they could do for us.”

“A bit of a political crisis?” Zorian asked slowly.

“It’s a long story,” Zach said dismissively. He took a large gulp from his massive keg of beer and

took a deep breath. He was going to get completely drunk again before this was all done, wasn’t he?

“I’ll tell you later, if Neolu herself doesn’t tell you.”

“Hello there. Do you mind if I join you for a few minutes?” a voice suddenly asked from the side.

Zach and Zorian were very surprised to hear this request. They had set up a privacy ward around

their table, which was a clear sign to everyone that they did not want to be disturbed. They turned

their attention to the source of the request, which turned out to be an older man in an expensive-

looking suit. He wasn’t one of the tavern workers and neither Zach nor Zorian had ever seen him

before, so it was unusual for him to approach them like this.

Despite this, Zorian did not think for a moment that the man was just a curious tavern patron.

After all, if the man was just your average person, he would be able to sense the man’s mind. And

he couldn’t. The man was completely blank to his mind sense, as if he didn’t exist at all.

Mind blank was not an easy spell to cast, and being under its effects immediately placed the man in

the upper tier selection of mages.

Zorian silently communicated this to Zach through telepathy, after which they shared an uneasy look

between themselves.

“Sure,” Zach eventually said. “Have a seat.”

The man smiled at them confidently, as if he had always known they would have accepted his

request. He took an empty chair from a nearby table and dragged it off to join them around theirs.

Zorian scrutinized him, trying to see if something in his features would jog his memory. He was a

pretty striking person, though, so it was unlikely he would have forgotten him if he had dealt with him

in the past. He had very proud posture, like someone who had been born with a silver spoon in his

mouth, and his clothes and immaculate appearance reinforced it. His skin was darker than was

common in this corner of Altazia, suggesting southern origins. Perhaps he was someone from Xlotic

whose attention they somehow attracted? It wouldn’t be impossible for a powerful mage from Xlotic

to eventually make their way to Eldemar.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” the man said politely. “I guess I should introduce myself. I am

Saruwata Merenptah and I’m afraid I’m here to discuss something a bit… unpleasant. You see, I

have recently noticed that you have been gathering information about me and interfering with my

activities, so I have decided to come here and see if there is any way we could discuss this in a

civilized manner and maybe come to a peaceful solution. I do not consider myself an unreasonable

man.”

What an exotic name… it definitely sounded Xlotic, but he was pretty sure that kind of name was

obscure even there. He definitely didn’t remember about interacting with any person named like that,

and he had a pretty good memory thanks to his mental powers. The rest of his story, though… what

the hell was he talking about? He gave Zach a questioning look, but his fellow time traveler shook

his head in the negative. Zorian turned back to the man and gave him a serious look.

“I’m afraid you made some kind of mistake, mister Merenptah,” Zorian said.

“No, I don’t think I have,” Saruwata said confidently. “My name may be confusing you somewhat. I

rarely use my old name when interacting with the public, so most people have forgotten it. Just the

way I like it, to be honest.”

Zorian frowned.

“How do you expect us to know who you are if you hide your identity like that?” Zach asked, his tone

somewhat unfriendly.

Zorian didn’t blame him; perhaps it was because of the man’s unflinching confidence, appearing as if

he was holding all the cards and the outcome of this meeting was already predetermined, or

because of the mind blank he put on himself, but he was really starting to dislike this ‘Saruwata

Merenptah’. He also noticed that the man’s soul was flawlessly stable, with not even the tiniest

ripples marring its surface as they spoke, which meant he was a soul mage of the highest order. Not

even Alanic could keep his soul so featureless.

“Ha ha!” the man abruptly laughed. His soul still remained completely calm, despite his obvious

amusement. “So you’re saying you’re targeting so many people that telling you I’m one of your

victims isn’t enough to narrow things down? Interesting, interesting…”

Zach scowled. “Mister Merenptah, I’m starting to think you’re asking for a beating.”

“If I tell you I’ve been around for a while, will this help?” the man said, grinning from ear to ear.

Master mage. Incredibly proficient in soul magic. Xlotic in origin. Someone they were targeting. Very

old… older than he looks? Fake appearance? Obscure name… possibly an archaic one? Old

enough to go out of fashion?

Fuck…

Zorian swallowed heavily.

“Quatach-Ichl?” he asked.

The man’s grin never wavered. Instead, a flash of sickly green light passed over his face for a

moment, revealing a familiar pitch-black skull of a millennia-old lich. Then the moment passed and

his face was the same flesh-and-blood mask he had been wearing up until now.

“I’m so pleased to deal with intelligent people,” Quatach-Ichl said, leaning back in his chair. “It makes

things so much easier. So… do you think you’re ready to talk?

Chapter 081

A Civil Conversation

The tavern was a bright, lively place. Not very crowded, which was why Zach and Zorian had chosen

it, but there were plenty of people talking, drinking, eating and walking around. Some of them gave

their table a glance from time to time, but that was just idle curiosity and they went about minding

their own business soon afterwards. Nobody really paid attention to them, nor to the new arrival that

had joined them at their table.

They didn’t even realize they were in the presence of a millennia-old lich that was currently plotting

to destroy the whole city.

Then again, that was to be expected. Quatach-Ichl’s disguise was practically flawless. Even Zach

and Zorian had been fooled until he had revealed himself, so how could a bunch of random

bystanders notice something was wrong? Even now, with the lich within a hand’s reach of Zorian, he

was struggling to notice any obvious tells that the man in front of him was actually a walking skeleton

instead of a real flesh-and-blood creature.

Seconds ticked by in total silence, the two sides silently staring at each other. Zorian would have

liked to claim that he was furiously thinking about the implications of this sudden visit and devising

the proper way to tackle it, but the truth was that he was thoroughly shocked and was having trouble

formulating any kind of coherent train of thought at the moment. He could hardly believe that

Quatach-Ichl had casually walked up to them in a busy tavern and started talking to them like there

was nothing wrong. What the hell was he even thinking!? This was surprisingly impulsive behavior

for someone who was supposed to be more than a thousand years old.

Fortunately, Zach was more adept at retaining his presence of mind in these kinds of unexpected

situations. The benefit of greater experience granted to him by the literal decades he had spent in

the time loop, Zorian supposed.

“You look better than I would have expected you to look,” Zach commented.

“How so?” Quatach-Ichl asked curiously. He made a couple of gestures at the passing waiter,

ordering something for himself. Zorian wasn’t sure what, but the waiter seemed to have understood

him and responded with a casual nod in return.

Why was a lich like Quatach-Ichl ordering drinks, even though he doesn’t need to drink? Probably for

the sake of appearances, but still. Could he even drink? Was his disguise good enough to allow that?

“You look surprisingly… fleshy,” Zach clarified, taking a sip from the massive mug of beer in front of

him.

“Ah, that,” Quatach-Ichl said. “Truthfully, this is how I usually look. The skeleton form is something I

reserve for battles and intimidation purposes.”

Having spied on the lich a few times in the previous restarts, Zorian knew this wasn’t quite true.

Quatach-Ichl also habitually appeared as a skeleton when interacting with the Ibasan forces and

other people involved in the invasion… though perhaps he counted that under ‘intimidation’.

“It’s pretty bold to just approach your enemies like this,” Zach commented.

“Are you going to attack me in the middle of this tavern?” Quatach-Ichl countered.

“I’m seriously considering it,” Zach said, his face twisted into a small frown.

“No, you’re not,” Quatach-Ichl said, giving them a knowing smile. “Putting aside the morality of

involving all these defenseless bystanders in our dispute, starting a fight here would be just as bad

for you as it would be for me. The ruling powers of this country would be just as interested in your

activities as they would be in my own – probably even more so, since you two would be easier to

blackmail and take control of than me.”

He was right, of course. The two of them had come here without disguises, in their real identities. If

they were to fight the Ibasan lich here, the authorities would track them down within a matter of

hours, and the level of skill they would be forced to show during the fight would intrigue and alarm

just about everyone involved. Once they started to look into Zach and Zorian, all sorts of interesting

things would come out. Even if the two of them won the fight with Quatach-Ichl and somehow

managed to avoid any dead bystanders or property damage along the way, the restart would be

effectively over. At that point they could just as well end the restart and start over.

Well, the truth was that the smartest thing to do would probably be to just end the restart

immediately. Having this ‘conversation’ with Quatach-Ichl was equivalent to playing with fire. Not

even the ability to end the restart on a whim could perfectly guarantee their safety. Sudomir could

detect when Zorian started messing with his soul marker, so Quatach-Ichl could doubtlessly do it

too. With him so close to them, and having come here prepared for anything, it was entirely possible

they might not be able to activate the marker in time before he made his move. Plus, an

unscrupulous, ancient mage like him would no doubt have a whole host of subtle tricks in his

arsenal, and they would possibly not even realize they were being attacked until it was too late.

Despite that, Zorian had to admit he was curious. He wanted to take the risk and hear what

Quatach-Ichl had to say. This was a potential disaster, but also a potential opportunity. It was the

first time they’d had the chance to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation with Quatach-Ichl,

and Zorian had a feeling this kind of thing was not an easy thing to replicate between restarts.

“What you say is true, but it seems to me that you’d still be the bigger loser if we fight,” Zorian said.

“If your actions become known to–”

“You could have easily made that happen by now,” Quatach-Ichl said calmly, cutting him off. “I don’t

know how much knowledge you have about what I’m trying to do, but I’m guessing quite a bit. You

could have easily made your findings public by now, but you didn’t. Instead you limited yourselves to

raiding our supply caches and striking at the more careless members of our little conspiracy.”

Zorian frowned. He supposed this was what Quatach-Ichl had been referring to when he said they

had been ‘interfering with his activities’. However, the fact of the matter was that Zach and Zorian

habitually did that kind of thing in every single restart, more in order to acquire additional funding

than anything else, and it had never caused them to run afoul of Quatach-Ichl as a result. Minor

complications like that didn’t usually arouse his attention. So the true reason Quatach-Ichl had

managed to find them must be located elsewhere, and Zorian could think of two main possibilities.

For one thing, this was the first time they’d gone after Quatach-Ichl directly, and maybe the ancient

lich could detect that somehow. The second possibility was that Silverlake had overestimated her

ability again and tried to gather information on Quatach-Ichl herself, with predictable results.

He was leaning towards the second possibility.

“So you saw we moved against your group and noticed we could have probably done even more

damage if we really tried and thought to yourself: ‘man, I really need to have a friendly chat with

those guys’?” Zach asked.

“Why not?” Quatach-Ichl challenged. “We may be enemies, but so what? Enemies talk to each other

all the time. Half of the world’s diplomats would be out of jobs otherwise. Well, all of them, if you’re a

cynical old bastard like myself and see all international interactions as fundamentally hostile, but you

know what I’m saying. The point is that you could have reported your findings to the authorities, but

decided not to. And I could have easily gone after some of the people close to you in retaliation for

the raids you’ve done on my allies, but chose to have this discussion with you instead.”

Both Zach and Zorian glared at him lightly in response to that thinly-veiled threat at the end.

Quatach-Ichl pretended not to notice the look.

“Anyway, what I’m saying is… we may be enemies, but we aren’t irreconcilable enemies,” Quatach-

Ichl concluded. “Surely we can reach some kind of agreement here?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you there,” Zach said. “You want to destroy Cyoria,

gather the souls of everyone who dies and feed them all to wraiths, release a primordial to rampage

around the region and trigger another round of Splinter Wars. Unless you’re willing to drop this whole

invasion thing and go back to your island, we pretty much are irreconcilable enemies. Don’t mistake

our current passivity for willingness to quietly watch by the sidelines while you execute your mad

schemes.”

“Aha. So I was right, you do know quite a lot…” Quatach-Ichl said slowly, neither alarmed nor angry

at Zach’s statement. “However, if you’ll forgive me for being a little blunt… why do you care?”

Zach raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’ve looked into you a bit before coming here,” the ancient lich continued. “Neither of you are all that

closely connected to the city itself. You are a scion of a dead house that has been taken advantage

of, and Zorian is just a talented outsider attending school here. I’m really not sure why people of your

caliber would waste time on basic magic classes like that, but there are all kinds of people in this

world, I suppose. Personally, I’d have gone crazy in a matter of weeks if I had to impersonate a

complete beginner at magic for several years but… eh, I’m getting a little off-track. The point is, each

of you has only a handful of people here that you really care about. We could easily arrange for them

to be outside on the day of the invasion. Do you really care that much, in your heart of hearts, about

all the random people that are going to die?”

If Quatach-Ichl had asked Zorian that at the start of the time loop, before he had largely come to

terms with his place in the world, got to know all the people around him and witnessed in

excruciating detail just what the invasion of Cyoria actually looked like… maybe he really would have

answered ‘no’ in his head, like Quatach-Ichl clearly expected him to.

But now…

He remembered the image of Nochka and the other shifter children, naked and in cages, reaching

out to him and screaming for help. It was closely followed by the memories of all the people who

helped him in all these restarts, and who would likely die in the invasion if he did nothing to stop it,

as well as all the different scenes of slaughter and looting he had witnessed over the restarts. He

decided that yes, he very much did care. And he was pretty sure Zach did too.

“Don’t you?” Zorian challenged.

“Not really, no,” Quatach-Ichl said seriously. “I come from an age where it was quite normal to round

up all the mages and combat-capable men in a conquered town and mount their severed heads on

pikes just outside the city walls as a warning to all who would dare defy you. I find modern

sentimentality in regards to war casualties insincere, hypocritical and faintly disgusting.”

“Ah,” said Zorian with distaste. He supposed this only made sense. Quatach-Ichl was more than a

millennium old, and came from a different, more bloodthirsty time. For all that he was considered

‘tough but fair’ by his own soldiers, the army he once led against the Old Alliance was famed for their

brutality towards the conquered populace. It was said to be one of the main reasons his side had lost

the war against Eldemar.

“What’s with that look on your face?” Quatach-Ichl said, rolling his eyes at him. “Be honest, now… if

you were really such a moral and upstanding citizen, why would you go to so much trouble to hide

your true level of power and all the various projects you seem to be financing? Why would you move

against me on your own instead of coordinating your actions with the law enforcement and the

military? Whomever you are connected to, it clearly isn’t Eldemar’s government. So I ask again: why

do you care so much about what happens to Cyoria?”

Huh. That was interesting. It was obvious that Quatach-Ichl had come to them mostly to fish for

information rather than because he truly believed he could come to some sort of agreement with

them, but up until now Zorian didn’t know what exactly he was after. Now, he was starting to suspect

that Quatach-Ichl was mainly concerned with puzzling out the identity of the forces standing behind

them.

In reality, Zach and Zorian were rogue agents, supported by no one… but there was no way

Quatach-Ichl would think that. It would be virtually impossible for two teenagers like them to have

reached the heights they did on their own, no matter how talented. Since Quatach-Ichl had failed to

find their backers when he investigated them, he could only conclude that they were very well

hidden.

The existence of a secret faction that he had not been aware of was doubtlessly bothering the old

lich, making him hesitate to move against them until he knew more.

Zorian quickly sent a telepathic message to Zach, warning him not to let it slip that there was nobody

backing them up. Quatach-Ichl would probably not believe them even if they openly admitted their

lack of support, but it was best not to push their luck like that.

“We already told you, you just don’t want to listen: because of the many, many casualties that would

result from your planned attack on the city,” Zach said. “And that’s just the start of the suffering. The

wars that would no doubt follow in the wake of the attack would–”

“Oh come on, you can’t blame me for that,” Quatach-Ichl complained. “I mean, I can understand you

blaming me for the destruction of the city, but another splinter war is inevitable. Surely you

understand that? This peace we have right now? It’s just a short breather so the countries involved

can recover from the damage the Weeping did to their command structure. Well, I personally think

every peace is just preparation for war, but this peace especially so. Another round of wars is going

to happen soon, regardless of whether Cyoria is attacked or not – I’m just trying to nudge the whole

thing in a direction that best suits the interests of Ulquaan Ibasa. Same as your own country of

Eldemar and everyone else involved, really.”

“I’m not entirely convinced that another war is inevitable,” Zorian remarked. Although there was

obviously a lot of truth in that, since he had heard that sentiment expressed by various people he

had interacted with over the restarts. “But even if that is true, there is a big difference between you

and most of those countries. Their plans eventually end in something stable. You just want to keep

everyone fighting forever so they cannot threaten your island.”

“What? No, I don’t. Who told you that?” Quatach-Ichl protested, actually sounding mildly incredulous.

“You don’t?” Zorian asked curiously. Truthfully, he was being deliberately provocative. He had no

idea what Quatach-Ichl really wanted, but what he said just now was one of the guesses discussed

by his subordinates and various members of the Cult of the World Dragon.

“It’s a stupid idea,” Quatach-Ichl said, shaking his head in exasperation. “The leaders of your nations

can be remarkably stupid sometimes, but they’re not that stupid. If we keep stirring shit up time and

time again, sooner or later they will all decide to set aside their differences for long enough to wipe

us out before getting back to killing each other.”

“Huh. So your actual goal is…?” Zorian tried.

“Heh. I guess it’s not that big of a secret anyway,” Quatach-Ichl said, smiling at him in a patronizing

manner. “I want to mess up Eldemar and Sulamnon and make Falkrinea win the war.”

What?

“What?” Zach protested. “Falkrinea? Why them?”

“Who else?” Quatach-Ichl asked, his tone making it clear it was a rhetorical question. “Eldemar and

Sulamnon would never seriously entertain peace with us – anyone who thinks they would is either

an idiot or a traitor. Falkrinea though… they are the weakest of the Big Three in terms of military,

and their heartland is very far from Ulquaan Ibasa. If they win and subdue Eldemar and Sulamnon,

they will doubtlessly be quite disinterested in some fool’s campaign to deal with Ulquaan Ibasa.

Keeping their former enemies suppressed should take most of Falkrinea’s strength. They will have

little power or inclination for other major undertakings.”

Zorian was about to ask why he thought Sulamnon would fail to take advantage of Eldemar’s

weakness instead when he remembered Sudomir’s plan with wraith bombs. He had intended to

make an example of Sulamnon to prove he was serious about using his wraith bombs on

defenseless towns, wasn’t he? Had Quatach-Ichl given him that idea? From the man’s memories, he

knew that Sudomir himself did not think so, but Zorian wouldn’t put it past Quatach-Ichl to have

subtly led the man onto the idea without him realizing it.

The conversation temporarily died down because the waiter had come to their table to deliver the

drinks Quatach-Ichl had ordered. To Zorian’s surprise, the lich had ordered three mugs of beer to be

brought to the table instead of just one – one for each of them. Zorian simply pushed his mug to the

side and ignored it, but Zach calmly poured the contents of the new, smaller mug into the giant one

already in front of him, which had been steadily getting emptier as they talked. This was no time to

get drunk, Zach…

As for Quatach-Ichl, he simply left his own mug untouched on the table in front of him. He didn’t

have so much as a sip out of it – Zorian suspected that despite looking like a flesh-and-blood

person, he couldn’t really drink and eat food like one. It was probably an ectoplasmic body of some

sort, similar to the ones employed by the simulacrum spell.

Since nobody wanted to discuss the invasion of Cyoria and similar topics in front of the waiter, a

brief silence descended upon the table. Zorian made use of it to consider their interaction with

Quatach-Ichl thus far. Sadly, the only conclusion he had was that it was all very strange. He really

couldn’t see through the ancient lich’s plots.

Zorian had been watching their adversary like a hawk, but Quatach-Ichl never tried anything

underhanded or gave any indication he wanted to drug them or target them with some subtle soul

magic spell or whatever. He also never got visibly angry with them, even though this conversation

probably wasn’t going the way he wanted it to, and even after Zorian ‘subtly’ scanned the beer he

had ordered to make sure it was safe.

No, their interaction with Quatach-Ichl had been entirely peaceful thus far. Aside from clearly fishing

for information about them and throwing in a ‘subtle’ threat or two in his statements, he seemed to

really want to just talk.

Hmm…

“Well, I can see this is not going anywhere, so let’s put all that aside for now,” Quatach-Ichl said after

the waiter left and a couple of seconds passed. “Instead, let me raise another issue – you have been

looking into me in these past few days.”

“Big deal,” Zach scoffed. “Clearly you have been looking into us, too.”

“As a response to your own actions, yes,” Quatach-Ichl said with a small smile. “But you

misunderstand. I’m not being outraged at you trying to get to know your enemy – I’m just wondering

if there is more to it than that. Sure, you could have been simply looking for a personal weakness or

a more effective tactic of dealing with me, but maybe… you actually wanted something from me?”

“You think we were trying to establish contact with you?” Zorian asked incredulously.

“It happens all the time,” Quatach-Ichl shrugged. “People regularly come to me for help.”

“They come to a sinister bag of old bones like you, begging for help?” Zach asked incredulously.

“Of course,” Quatach-Ichl said with a big grin, not the least bit insulted by Zach’s choice of words.

“I’m a millennia-old archmage. I have survived several world shaking events, and even participated

in some of them. People seek me out for all kinds of reasons. Some want lost or restricted magics

that are almost impossible to get otherwise, some want to borrow my strength and expertise, and

some are simply curious historians trying to get first-hand accounts of bygone eras. I usually help the

latter ones for free, being a man of culture and generosity that I am, but others have to make it worth

my time. Don’t let that intimidate you, though – I don’t deal in souls or demand people’s firstborn

sons or whatever you read about liches in all those slanderous books your government keeps

shoving down your throats. I’m an honorable lich, only ruthless to my enemies, and I pride myself on

my fair and honest dealing with others.”

“I see,” Zach said, tapping his finger on the table thoughtfully. He then leaned forward

conspiratorially and said, “As a matter of fact, we do have something we want from you.”

“Oh?” said Quatach-Ichl, leaning forward as well. “Do tell.”

Zach opened his mouth and then paused for a second, no doubt purely for the sake of drama.

“We want the crown you’re wearing,” he whispered in a low voice.

For the first time since the meeting had begun, Quatach-Ichl seemed genuinely surprised. Zorian

didn’t blame him. He was pretty shocked Zach had decided to bring that up, too. He didn’t say

anything, though. Hopefully his trust in his fellow time traveler wasn’t misplaced and Zach actually

knew what he was doing instead of simply being a little tipsy and ignoring the possible

consequences.

In any case, the surprise on Quatach-Ichl’s face didn’t last long. He soon began laughing instead,

leaning back in his chair and shaking his head.

“Oh, you two… I knew it was a good idea to come here,” the lich eventually said, having managed to

compose himself again. “You’re not even joking, are you? I say, sometimes I wish I could go back to

being as young and brash as this… do you even know what this crown is?”

“Of course,” Zach said. “It’s one of the artifacts of the first Ikosian emperor.”

“Good eye,” Quatach-Ichl said, giving them a thoughtful look. “It’s been quite a while since someone

had recognized it for what it is. Most people think I’m just a megalomaniac for wearing a fancy crown

all the time and leave it at that. How did you know? I thought you had never actually seen me before

today, but I guess your investigation of me has been a lot more thorough than I suspected…”

“In truth, we knew you were in the possession of one of the imperial artifacts before we had even

started investigating you,” Zach said.

“Oh?” Quatach-Ichl asked in interest.

“It’s because of this,” said Zach, retrieving the portable palace orb from his jacket pocket.

He extended the orb towards Quatach-Ichl, letting him inspect it in detail.

The old lich stared at the orb for more than 20 seconds in total silence, gazing into it with a serious

face.

“The imperial orb…” he finally said. “I thought it was lost.”

“It was,” Zach nodded, yanking the orb back and shoving it back into his pocket. “And now it has

been found again.”

“So it has,” Quatach-Ichl agreed. “However, I don’t understand how it is related to the crown I’m

wearing. Unless you’re saying the orb can detect the other imperial artifacts?”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying,” Zach nodded. “Well, to be more precise, the owner of any of the

imperial artifacts can detect all the others. If one can access their hidden functions, that is.”

What an impressive pack of lies. Not that Zorian cared too much about Zach lying to the murderous

old lich in front of them, but it was kind of impressive that Zach could think up something so

misleading, yet technically true. After all, the Key pieces did have hidden functions, and if one could

access them, then they clearly had a marker as well…

“Truly impressive,” Quatach-Ichl praised. “I always knew there was more to the crown than I had

managed to uncover, but the hidden abilities had always eluded me. I don’t suppose the orb is for

sale?”

“Is your crown for sale?” Zach replied, countering a question with a question.

“Not for all the money in the world,” Quatach-Ichl said.

“Well then,” Zach shrugged. “You have your answer, then, don’t you?”

“And yet… I feel there is a reason you showed me that orb,” Quatach-Ichl speculated.

“How about a trade?” Zach tried. “You tell us what your crown does and in return we tell you what

the orb does. Very simple and innocuous, and we both get to satisfy our curiosity without having to

part with our precious priceless artifacts. How about it?”

“Very simple and innocuous, indeed,” Quatach-Ichl deadpanned. “But the thing is, I already know

what the orb does. It’s just a particularly large pocket dimension, no?”

“No, no,” Zach said, shaking his head. “It does more than that.”

“It does? I see…” Quatach-Ichl said thoughtfully. “I think I’m still going to refuse that offer, though. I

have a feeling that I would still end as the loser in that exchange. Give me something more to work

with. Say… the location of one of the other artifacts you uncovered?”

“Sure,” Zach said, agreeing with the suggestion immediately. Of course he did. At the end of the day,

the very nature of the time loop made this kind of information exchange inherently biased in their

favor. Everything they said to Quatach-Ichl today, he would forget when the time loop reset itself.

“Shall we go first, or do you want the honor?”

“It might as well be me,” Quatach-Ichl shrugged. He didn’t seem terribly concerned about revealing

such an important personal secret. “It’s not such a big secret, anyway. I actually use it as a form of

intimidation sometimes. You see… the crown is one massive mana battery.”

There was a second of silence following that statement.

“What?” Zorian said incredulously. “That’s it? Just a mana battery?”

“Ha!” Quatach-Ichl grinned. “I knew you’d react like that! It never gets old. However, when I say it’s a

mana battery, I don’t mean it stockpiles ambient mana like the mana batteries modern mages make.

I mean it stockpiles the personal mana of the wearer… and the mana inside it never gets un-attuned.

It effectively makes my maximum mana reserves ten times larger than they naturally are.”

“T-Ten times!?” Zorian couldn’t help but blurt out. By the gods… and he thought Zach was a total

mana monster.

Although Zach was more reserved, one could see on his face that he was also boggling at the utterly

ridiculous amount of personal mana that Quatach-Ichl apparently had at his disposal.

The ancient lich seemed very pleased by their reaction.

“Of course, that is without considering the divine blessing I’ve received in the past, which doubled

my already impressive mana reserves,” Quatach-Ichl continued. “Measuring of one’s mana reserves

was in a rather primitive state at the time I had begun my mage career, so I don’t really know what

sort of magnitude I would have according to the standards of modern mages, but I think I was

about… magnitude 25? Something along those lines, I believe. The divine blessing then doubled my

maximum without hurting my shaping skills in the slightest, so my natural mana reserves were huge

even before I got ahold of this lovely little crown. So when I said my mana reserves are effectively

ten times their normal size due to the crown? It’s actually even more impressive than it sounds.”

How… interesting. Zorian shared a long look with Zach. That explanation about the divine blessing

that doubled his mana reserves… didn’t that sound rather familiar?

“So…” Quatach-Ichl eventually said with a grin. “Do you still think making an enemy out of me is a

good idea?”

“This blessing you spoke about…” Zorian tried.

“Aha, no,” Quatach-Ichl said, raising his finger to stop him. “I honored my side of the bargain. Now

it’s time for you to honor yours.”

“Fine, fine,” Zach sighed. “Aside from being a massive portable pocket dimension, the imperial orb is

also a nigh-infinite memory bank, capable of storing a massive amount of personal memories and

mental blueprints inside it.”

Quatach-Ichl considered it for a moment.

“Considering the scarcity of writing supplies in those times… yes, I can see how that kind of function

would be invaluable. Not that impressive today, although the remaining records inside the orb, if any,

would be incredibly valuable. To historians, if nothing else. How much did you find inside?”

“No comment,” Zach immediately said. The memory bank was completely empty, of course, as it

could only be used inside the time loop, but Quatach-Ichl didn’t need to know that.

“Fair enough,” Quatach-Ichl conceded.

“As for the location of one of the other imperial artifacts…” Zach said. “Well, you can find the dagger

inside Eldemar’s royal vault. You’re already attacking the country in question, so you should have no

qualms about breaking into its royal vaults as well.”

“They have one of the imperial artifacts and they’re letting it gather dust inside the treasury,”

Quatach-Ichl said, shaking his head sadly. “How typical.”

There was a brief and uncomfortable silence as both Zach and Zorian waited for the lich to say

something more, but he never did. Instead he simply observed them silently, saying nothing.

“So, this blessing you spoke about…” Zorian tried again.

“It’s going to cost you,” Quatach-Ichl immediately warned.

“Well, what do you want?” Zorian asked him bluntly.

“Since you’re asking questions about the divines, I think it would only be appropriate if you offered

something divine yourself,” Quatach-Ichl smiled.

Zorian thought about it for a second before pulling out the mysterious dagger they had found in the

imperial orb and handing it to Quatach-Ichl. Giving the ancient lich a divine artifact of unknown

powers in exchange for this kind of information would be monumentally stupid in any other

circumstances, but he really wanted the proper answer to his question and the dagger would be

back in his hands in the next restart anyway.

Quatach-Ichl gingerly accepted the dagger and immediately started casting spells on it, scaring

Zorian quite a bit. This was the first time Quatach-Ichl had performed any sort of magic after

approaching them, and Zorian watched him like a hawk to make sure he didn’t slip in something

unsavory between all those divination spells he was casting at the dagger.

“It’s a divine artifact,” Quatach-Ichl eventually concluded.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “Divine for divine, no?”

“What does it do?” he asked.

Zorian was pleased that not even a millennia-old lich like him could just casually figure out divinely-

bestowed powers.

“I don’t know,” he admitted to the lich. “It’s just something we recovered from an old ruin.”

“So it could be totally useless or amazingly powerful,” Quatach-Ichl concluded, turning the dagger

carefully in his hands and studying the lines and glyphs etched into its surface. Zorian knew he

would find out nothing through that, though. They appeared to be purely decorative and said little

about the dagger itself.

“No divine artifact is useless,” Zorian insisted.

“You’re wrong,” Quatach-Ichl said, shaking his head. “Gods were very impulsive, whimsical

creatures. They made all sorts of pointless items purely as a joke back in their heyday, it’s just that

most of them broke down or got thrown away as the years went by.”

“Divine artifacts can break down?” Zach asked curiously.

“Of course,” Quatach-Ichl nodded seriously. “Most of the surviving divine artifacts are not

unbreakable because this is some inherent trait of a divine artifact – they are unbreakable because

they wouldn’t have lasted for centuries if they weren’t.”

“Still, based on what you just said, the very fact this dagger lasted up until this day means it’s

probably at least a little bit useful,” Zorian said.

“There is some truth to that,” Quatach-Ichl acknowledged. He looked Zorian straight in the eye. “Are

you sure you want to trade this, though? You could be losing a real treasure, you know?”

“I’m sure,” Zorian said firmly. “Just make sure to give me an extra-detailed explanation if you’re so

worried about taking advantage of me.”

“Ha! Decisive. I like that,” Quatach-Ichl said. “Well, since you’re not afraid to take a risk, I guess it

would be pretty pathetic of me to shy away from it.”

With a dramatic flourish, Quatach-Ichl twirled the dagger expertly in his hand, showing impressive

manual dexterity, and then… pushed the dagger straight into his chest.

The dagger sank into him like he was made out of water, right through the clothes, and then it was

gone like it never existed. Quatach-Ichl also looked completely unharmed by the action.

He folded his hands over his chest and smiled at them.

“What exactly did you want to know?” he asked.

“You said this divine blessing of yours doubled your maximum mana reserves,” Zorian said. “Was

that a typical size of increase for such blessings?”

“Hm?” Quatach-Ichl hummed, seemingly surprised at the question. “Well… that’s an interesting

question, but I’m afraid I can’t answer that. People with divine blessings were rare, even in times

when the gods still roamed the earth, and they tended not to advertise their identity and capabilities.

If you think secrecy among top mages is bad today, you don’t want to know what the ancient

archmages were like. So many legacies got lost because the old fools refused to let anyone see

their work… but I digress. I suspect that the sort of blessing I received is relatively typical of its sort.

Making someone’s mana reserves twice as big utterly dwarfs any sort of ‘natural’ increase one can

obtain through other means, thus firmly cementing the god as actually godly, but it isn’t completely

over the top. Plus, doubling something is a nice, simple-to-understand change.”

“Do you know how it actually works?” Zorian asked.

“In very general terms,” the ancient lich said. “It’s a sort of stabilization frame made out of divine

energy, encircling the soul. Somehow, this allows the target to store and regenerate more mana

without hurting their shaping skills. Nearly undetectable through classical magic, just like all divine

works, but the fact it interacts with one’s soul means that skilled necromancers can eventually learn

how to perceive it through soul perception.”

A stabilization frame? Was it perhaps… in the shape of an icosahedron? Did Quatach-Ichl design his

gate stabilization frame based on the faint outline of the soul stabilization frame that encircled his

soul? Zorian thought about hinting at it somehow and observing the lich’s reaction before deciding

that was probably going too far.

“Is there any way to receive such a divine blessing other than getting it from a god?” Zach asked

with a frown.

“Technically yes,” Quatach-Ichl said. “The angels are said to be able to bestow such blessings to this

very day. However, they are extremely stingy with them and are said to only bestow them upon their

most pious and capable servants. I rather doubt they would be impressed with either of you two. So

in reality, no, there really isn’t any way for you to receive such a blessing. It’s a privilege that only

ancient monsters like me and a few fanatical dogs of the church can wield.”

They asked a few more questions in regards to the soul stabilization frame and how it could be

detected, probably rousing some of Quatach-Ichl’s interest in the process, but eventually the old lich

decided he’d had enough of their questions and turned to leave.

“Well,” he said, rising from his seat. “I enjoyed this talk and you’ve given me a lot to think about, but I

think this is a good time to stop.”

“Yes,” Zorian agreed. It was getting tiresome constantly being on his guard around the ancient lich,

making sure he didn’t say the wrong thing or miss some sinister plot unfolding in the background.

“If you want to talk more, feel free to contact me through this,” Quatach-Ichl said, handing them a

simple paper calling card, plain white and undecorated. The only thing on it was an address in

Cyoria, typed in bold, black letters.

Zorian silently pocketed the calling card.

“I have a feeling we’ll see each other again, soon,” the old lich said with a grin, before turning around

and calmly walking out of the tavern.

A long silence followed in his wake, neither Zach nor Zorian saying anything for a full minute, just

listening to background noise of the tavern and playing the entire encounter repeatedly in their

heads.

“I guess the most pressing question now is: what do we do?” Zorian asked. “Do we do the smart

thing and immediately end this ticking time bomb of a restart… or do we play with fire and try to take

advantage of this somehow?”

“I don’t know,” Zach sighed, pushing away his giant mug to the side. In the end he never did manage

to completely finish it, though Zorian felt that was more due to the circumstances than a literal

inability to do so. “It’s hard to think straight about this right now. I’ve got so many bad experiences

with that damn bag of bones… I got trashed by him so many times, got so many of my plans ruined

when he just swooped in and started wrecking the place… but if you forced me to give you an

answer right now?”

Zorian sighed. He already knew what the answer was going to be.

“I always did like fire,” Zach said with a grin.

Chapter 082

Ancient Circles

Aranhal, the unfortunate nation that had lost its airship prototype to Zach and Zorian, had been

affected deeply by the theft. It was a huge blow to their prestige to lose their prized creation in such

a dramatic manner, possibly more so than a mere technical failure would have been. If the design

itself was flawed or the builders had assembled the vessel incorrectly and it crashed during its

maiden flight, that would have been kind of embarrassing… but mostly for the project itself and the

factions that supported it. Having a bunch of thieves break into the construction site and steal it

away, though? That reflected badly on the whole country. It didn’t help that Aranhal couldn’t

suppress the information that they had engaged the thieves in an airship battle and lost. The airship

they had lost in the ensuing battle couldn’t be simply swept under the rug, after all. Many people

ended up losing their positions over this scandal, information gathering groups in the entire region

were going crazy trying to figure out which group was responsible for the feat and rumors were flying

that a massive audit of Aranhal’s government agencies and armed forces was in the works…

Zach and Zorian, the causes of the entire furor, were only dimly aware of all this. They kept an eye

on the news and reports coming from the region, but it didn’t seem like Aranhal was getting any

closer to tracking them down, so they gradually lost interest. Zorian did find it kind of interesting how

many otherwise obscure groups and individuals were roused into action as a result of their theft,

though. Perhaps it would be a good idea to stir up some similarly great outrage back in Altazia, just

to see if something particularly interesting would show itself in its wake…

That was a thought for some other time, though. At the moment, Zach and Zorian were simply

relaxing on their new airship as it flew over the empty, sun-scorched desert. They weren’t going

anywhere in particular – they were just meandering from one random place to another, testing the

ship’s flight systems and enjoying the view. As an added bonus, aimlessly flying around the Xlotic

desert was a pretty good way of foiling any attempt to eavesdrop on them. No matter what kind of

exotic methods of tracking them down and spying on them Quatach-Ichl had at his disposal, they

probably couldn’t reach across continents and reach them here.

“Wow, the view from here is amazing! And look, those four tower-like rock formations over there?

Those are Retam’s Fangs, where the prince of Ixam and the rebel queen Hanfa swore an alliance to

unite their forces and repel the Ikosian forces encroaching upon their land. Even though they failed

in the end, I always thought their story of forbidden lovers fighting a doomed battle against

insurmountable odds was so romantic…”

Zorian glanced to his side, where Neolu was leaning over the airship railing and animatedly babbling

about anything that caught her eye. Bringing her along with them when they boarded the airship kind

of interfered with the idea of maximum security, but Quatach-Ichl already had plenty of people to

choose from if he wanted to kidnap someone to question about Zach and Zorian, so whatever. He

was more amazed that she was willing to go along with them, to be honest. A couple of

acquaintances come up to you one day and tell you that they’re time travelers and want you to join

them for a joyride in their stolen airship and you just… accept the offer?

“I’m hardly an expert on ancient Ikosian history, but wasn’t that alliance a matter of pure

pragmatism? And didn’t the prince of Ixam have his father’s permission to broker a deal with the

rebels?” Zorian asked curiously. “What exactly makes this a case of ‘forbidden love’?”

Neolu gave him an unamused look.

“Err, never mind,” Zorian said quickly. He didn’t want to start an argument about a silly topic like that.

“Forbidden love it is.”

Neolu’s expression brightened immediately, and she clapped her hands happily.

“We should come down and look around!” she said enthusiastically. “I hear nobody has been here

for nearly a decade, since it’s so deep in the desert now. I want to take a souvenir or two. Ooh, my

sisters will be so jealous when I show them…”

Zorian really didn’t understand her. She readily accepted their claims about the existence of the time

loop – although she was indeed more wary of the story when it was both Zach and Zorian talking to

her about it rather than just Zach – but the way she spoke and behaved made Zorian wonder how

much she really believed them. She didn’t seem to care at all about the impending end of the month

that would rob her of everything she achieved here.

In any case, they had no reason to refuse her request. It wasn’t like they were pressed for time, or

even going anywhere in particular, so stopping by for some sightseeing and to pick up some pretty

rocks was okay. Besides, Zorian believed that once Neolu experienced the scorching heat of the

desert outside the airship, she would quickly decide to cut their visit short.

Two hours later, he realized he may have underestimated Neolu somewhat. Being a Xlotic native,

she seemed to possess a much higher comfort threshold for hot, dry climates than he or Zach did.

She was also far more athletic than he had given her credit for, because she was jumping about and

maneuvering herself across the rock landscape with far more grace than he would have expected

from a teenage girl wearing a dress.

Maybe it was some kind of a bloodline? House Iljatir, like many magical Houses, was rather

secretive about its family magic and special abilities, but they probably had them.

“Hey, Zach,” Zorian called out. His fellow time traveler, who was just in the process of carving ‘Zach

was here’ into one of the stone formations, turned to him with a questioning look. “What is House

Iljatir’s special thing?”

“I don’t know,” said Zach. “Something divination-based. Neolu got all apologetic when I asked and

said she wasn’t allowed to tell me and I didn’t push. I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Something divination-based, huh?” Zorian mused thoughtfully. Hmm. Depending on what exactly

that represented, maybe she had an actual reason for trusting them so easily…

“Yeah,” confirmed Zach, either not realizing or not caring that Zorian was mostly talking to himself

when he repeated his words. “Those three blue circles she has imprinted on her cheeks and

forehead? They’re supposed to represent eyes.”

“Oh. I was kind of wondering about that,” Zorian said.

“You could have just asked her,” Zach said, shaking his head and turning back to finish his

inscription. “She’s a really easy person to talk to, you know? Even if you ask something she can’t tell

you, she probably won’t get mad at you.”

After mulling it over for a few seconds, Zorian decided to do just that. He approached the cheery girl

that joined them on this trip and waved at her to get her attention. She seemed to be in the process

of trying to capture one of the small blue lizards that made their home in this place, though, and was

so focused on her task that she did not notice him. The little creatures were totally harmless, but

very fast after soaking in the sun for hours on end and quite tricky to catch.

“Neolu?” he asked.

She jumped a little in surprise at his sudden interruption, before refocusing on him. Her eyes, blue

like the markings on her cheeks and forehead, stared at him uncomprehendingly for a second before

an idea seemed to occur to her.

“Catch one for me!” she commanded, pointing at one of the distant blue lizards with her finger. The

lizard instantly reacted to her sudden move, darting so fast into a nearby crevice that it looked like it

teleported.

Zorian raised his eyes at her, his mouth stretching into an amused smile.

“Err, please?” she added with a nervous smile of her own.

“Fine,” Zorian sighed. After a second of consideration, he decided to go for the simplest option – he

reached into the mind of the nearest lizard and manipulated it into coming over on its own. Once it

approached close enough, he simply scooped it up and handed it to the girl next to him, who

immediately started to coo and fawn over it. Didn’t girls usually find reptiles creepy and disgusting?

“Look at you, so gorgeously blue and gloriously spiky,” Neolu said, turning the lizard over so she

could see him from all sides. The lizard looked decidedly unamused with her manhandling, and

would have started biting her fingers by now had Zorian not been constantly calming it down. Neolu

gave him a curious look. “How did you do that?”

“Mind magic,” he answered honestly. Using mind magic against animals was not illegal, and didn’t

typically scare people.

“Oh. That’s kind of cheating,” she frowned. She stared at the little lizard in her hand for a few

seconds before sighing dramatically. “I kind of want to keep it, but… no, that would be wrong. I don’t

have anywhere to keep it, I don’t know what it eats, and it would probably be lonely without its

fellows.”

She lowered the lizard back to the ground and Zorian released his mental hold on it. Surprisingly, the

little lizard didn’t immediately run away after that. Instead, it opted to give them confused looks and it

shuffled in place uncertainly.

“Go along little guy, you can go home now,” Neolu said. “Don’t forget me, okay?”

The lizard blinked at her in confusion, probably wondering why the big creature didn’t eat it when it

when it had the chance, before turning around and darting away into the distance.

“Sorry about that. I get a little weird sometimes,” Neolu said, turning back towards him. “I guess you

wanted to tell me something? Is it time to leave?”

“No, I was actually just going to ask you about something,” Zorian said. “You don’t have to answer if

you don’t want to, but I’m kind of curious… how come you accepted our story so easily?”

“Shouldn’t you already know the answer for this?” she said curiously. “You’re the ancient time

traveler who has seen it all, right?”

“I’m not that ancient, actually,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “I spent about seven years in this time

loop, not counting the time dilation rooms.”

“Time dilation rooms?” Neolu asked curiously. “What are those?”

“It’s a long story. Ask me some other time, okay?” Zorian said. “The point is that I have not seen it all

– not even close. Truthfully, this is the first time I’ve had any significant interaction with you.”

“Boo! Am I so boring?” she pouted.

“Not at all,” Zorian said hastily. “It’s just…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine…” said laughed. “I’m just teasing. Well, mostly. You say I accepted your story really

easily, so that means you tried to convince many other people thus far. Depending on how far down

the list I am, I might actually be offended…”

“It was mostly Zach who tried to convince all our classmates and anyone who would listen, so that

statement is based mostly around what he told me of his experiences,” Zorian said. “He said most

people reacted really badly to his claim of being trapped in an ever-repeating month. Especially in

the beginning, before he honed his skills to downright implausible levels and memorized which

secret and prediction this or that person found convincing. You though… you always accepted his

story very easily. Even in this restart, where you know we stole an airship and both of us approached

you instead of just Zach–”

“Why would it matter that you both approached me about this?” Neolu asked with a frown.

“Err…” Zorian fumbled.

“Oh. Oh! I get it,” Neolu giggled. “I guess I can see it, he can be kind of cute…” She suddenly

stopped and gave Zorian a panicked look. “I mean, not that you’re not, but you’re a bit too quiet and

passive for my taste and– gods, I should have just pretended to be scandalized about this, shouldn’t

I? Okay, okay, shutting up now…”

“You know, you still haven’t answered my question,” Zorian pointed out, amused.

“What? Oh, about me being easy to convince…” Neolu said, giving him a short, nervous laugh.

“Right, I don’t really have an answer to that. I guess you’re expecting some big mystery here but

there isn’t any. I’m just kind of foolish, I guess. We know each other, I could tell that you had no

malicious intentions towards me and you provided all the proof I asked of you… even if you were

delusional or lying, I probably wouldn’t have been in any harm.”

Zorian gave her a speculative look. The way she phrased her statement gave the impression she

trusted a mere hunch about their good character to keep her safe, but the surety in her voice made

Zorian think there was something a lot more concrete involved there. Perhaps something…

divination-based?

“And if I asked you how you were so sure we had no malicious intentions towards you?” he asked

curiously.

“Woman’s intuition,” she said cheerfully, her voice sounding like she had been just waiting for a

chance to use that response.

“Well, regardless of the reason, I thank you for your trust,” Zorian said.

“No problem!” Neolu said, giving him an appreciative look for not pushing her on the issue. “Was

there anything else you wanted to ask?”

“Yes, actually,” Zorian said. “This may be too personal, but why did a girl from Xlotic decide to go all

the way to Cyoria to attend a magic academy? It’s a somewhat curious thing to do, you know?”

“Ah…” Neolu sighed, her good mood suddenly deflating somewhat. But only somewhat. “That. Well,

my mother is actually from Eldemar. She used to tell me stories of her homeland when I was little,

and I always wanted to visit the place. So I begged my father to let me come and he couldn’t say no

to me. That’s the reason I usually tell people when they ask me that question. And, I mean, it’s kind

of true! I really did want to visit. And Cyoria is really interesting and I’m not really sorry for being

there…”

“But?” Zorian prompted.

“But if it was for that, I probably wouldn’t have gone so far as to sign up for school here,” Neolu said.

“I would have simply visited for a few months. The truth is my father has made some pretty serious

enemies back in Nelentar, and there were concerns they would go after his family to get to him.

Especially after me, because… um, father doesn’t really trust my judgment much.”

How… very surprising. Then again, most people would say that Zorian’s parents were in the right

and that Zorian was being unreasonable when he clashed with them, so maybe he should be more

open-minded about Neolu’s reasons for acting the way she did.

“In the end, it was decided I would be sent to Eldemar,” Neolu continued. “That way I would be out of

danger, I get to fulfill my long-time wish to visit my mother’s homeland and the whole thing can be

explained back home as my father spoiling his daughter a little too much. Three birds with one

stone, no?”

“Indeed,” Zorian agreed. Though he personally found it sad that Neolu’s father sent his daughter to

Cyoria to keep her safe, only to have the city invaded by Ibasans in the end. That didn’t exactly go

according to plan…

“Anyway! I actually think the whole thing turned out really well in the end, so I have no regrets. You

don’t have to feel sorry about me,” Neolu said. “Though to be honest, I’ll probably be glad when I’m

done with the academy and can come back home. I… kind of miss my family. You probably don’t

understand, being able to see yours any time you want and all.”

“Err, yeah… you’re probably right about that,” Zorian said slowly. He didn’t bother clarifying that it

was not quite for the reasons she was thinking of.

They wandered the rocky landscape for a while after that, after which all three of them returned to

the airship and continued their aimless wandering through the desert. Neolu somehow talked him

into helping her take away a large green rock from the site, even though it was pretty much

worthless as far as Zorian could tell, and he couldn’t possibly fathom what she intended to do with it,

and she was inordinately happy about that. She spent about half an hour humming to herself and

inspecting the rock in great detail before eventually seeking him out again.

“Zorian, can I ask you something?” she asked him, then immediately continued with her follow-up

question without waiting for his answer. “This time loop of yours… it’s going to end someday, right?”

“Yes?” Zorian said, unsure what she was getting at.

“So one day, this month will run its course as it always does… and I will live on and remember

instead of endlessly forgetting?” she prompted further. “And you will remember this day and act

accordingly?”

“I… that’s the idea,” Zorian said, faltering slightly. They never told her that there was a good chance

they would be destroyed in the end, having failed to leave the time loop before it collapsed. He didn’t

really want to tell her about that if he didn’t have to, either.

“What do you intend to do when that happens?” she asked, biting her lip. “About me, I mean.”

“About you?” Zorian asked, caught a little off-guard by the direction this was going in. “Well, it

depends on what you want us to do, I guess.”

“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted. “I just know I had fun today and I don’t want to forget it all.”

Ah… and here he thought the realization she would lose everything at the end of the month hadn’t

affected her in the slightest. Maybe the implications of the time loop just hadn’t hit her up until now?

Unfortunately, there was very little he could do to comfort her in regards to that. Aside from lying, of

course.

“But,” she continued, “since that is not possible, I have a somewhat selfish request out of you and

Zach: when we meet again at the end, don’t pretend this never happened. You don’t have to tell me

about the time loop, but don’t be a stranger. I know I’m probably not the most exciting person you’ve

met over the years, but you’re not allowed to forget me, okay?”

Zorian gave her a strange look.

“Well… okay,” he said slowly.

“Yay! New friends!” she exclaimed, causing Zorian to sigh a little. She really reminded him of a little

kid in some respects. Or Novelty.

He really missed that silly little spider sometimes…

“I hope you realize we won’t be stealing this airship in the final version of this month,” Zorian said.

“So this particular memory is… probably never going to be recreated.”

Neolu seemed to give it a serious thought.

“That’s probably for the best,” she eventually decided. “From what the papers are saying, you killed

a lot of people when you destroyed that pursuing airship. That wasn’t very nice.”

“I… really don’t understand you,” Zorian admitted, shaking his head. “You know that, but you’re still

here. And you want to be friends with us.”

“All those people will be alive when time resets again, so it’s fine,” Neolu said with small shrug. “But

hey! Even without the airship, you can still open doors between continents, no? That’s how we

reached your airship in the first place. So you can take me to see all these places anyway!”

Zorian opened his mouth to point out that revealing they could perform intercontinental travel spells

was still a huge deal, but in the end he just shut his mouth and remained quiet. Considering Neolu’s

peculiar personality, she was probably one of the few people who could handle such a revelation

without totally freaking out.

“I guess you’re right,” he eventually conceded.

Besides, what was incredible cosmic power for if not for taking a girl out on a casual vacation into

uninhabited desert filled with crumbling ruins and bloodthirsty monsters?

Maybe Zach was becoming a bad influence on him…

- break -

In the end, it was not hard at all to talk Neolu into helping them find the translators and contacts they

needed to operate more freely in the Xlotic region. Most of these were going to be in her home

country of Nelentar, since that was where she could wield her family influence the most and where

her knowledge of local knowledge and customs was most pronounced, but that was still plenty

useful. With such a solid starting point, it wouldn’t be hard to extend their net wider throughout the

region.

They ended up dropping her off in Nelentar with a pair of simulacrums while they returned back on

the airship to discuss something else. Namely, the Quatach-Ichl situation.

“It’s been a few days now,” Zorian said. “We’ve both had time to calm down and think about it. Do

you still think we should take a risk and try to broker some kind of deal with Quatach-Ichl?”

“Well, yeah,” Zach said. “I mean, what’s not to like? It would be trivially simple to give him divine

artifacts, or even pieces of the Key like the imperial orb, in exchange for rare magic and knowledge.

Then we can do it again in the subsequent restart with him none the wiser. I feel a dark spark of joy

at the very thought of such a scenario. If there is anyone that I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty doing

that to, it’s him.”

“I’m not sure how far we can take that, though,” Zorian said nervously. “He’s bound to notice

something is wrong at some point. Especially if we trade for magical instructions – if Xvim and Alanic

could notice when we were displaying their own techniques, Quatach-Ichl can surely do the same.

And I’m fairly sure he would react far more violently to the idea of someone stealing his secrets.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zach said, shaking his head. “It just means we have to be smart about this. We

ask him about pocket dimensions in one restart, then about soul magic in the next, then about

dimensional gates and so forth. We try our best to get the most we can out of each interaction, and

only when we have exhausted a full list of topics do we consider revisiting some of them. If we’re

pursuing a different topic each time, he shouldn’t be able to notice anything is wrong.”

“Yes, I’ve considered that idea too,” Zorian mused. “But that rests on the idea that the lich is actually

trustworthy.”

“He did come to talk to us instead of simply trying to assassinate us or kidnapping people we hang

around with to blackmail us,” Zach pointed out.

“It’s hard to tell how much of that is his real attitude and how much he was simply afraid of rousing

some kind of sleeping dragon, though,” Zorian pointed out. “He clearly thinks there is some kind of

secret force supporting us. If he knew we were on our own, I have a feeling he would have been

much more domineering.”

“Well, that problem has an obvious answer, at least,” Zach laughed. “We just need to make sure he

never finds out!”

Zorian supposed he was right about that. It didn’t make Zorian feel any better about the idea,

though.

Reaching into his pocket, Zorian retrieved a piece of paper and unfolded it. It held a simple address

in Cyoria, transcribed from the calling card that Quatach-Ichl had given them. He had thrown the

original into a public trash can an age ago, of course. Even though it looked perfectly normal and he

couldn’t actually find anything wrong with it, it was better to be safe than sorry.

“What are you thinking of?” Zach asked after a few seconds.

“I’m just wondering how much of Quatach-Ichl’s attitude that day was real and how much of it was a

carefully crafted mask,” Zorian said. “He did come there in what was effectively an ectoplasmic

disguise and maintained perfect control over his soul throughout the entire meeting. For all we know,

every word and expression could have been carefully calculated to leave a specific impression.”

“Eh, I don’t think so,” Zach immediately said, shaking his head. “I did have short interactions with him

from time to time in various restarts, you know. None as extensive as the one that day, but it adds

up. And the Quatach-Ichl we met that day was very much like what I remember of him in the past.

He had that same uncaring, informal manner of speech that looks so out of place on a terrifying old-

as-dirt lich and the casual way he threatened us, more like he was stating facts than trying to be

menacing… it sounded very much like what I was used to. No doubt there was some level of

deception and social manipulation going there, but I don’t think he was faking most of it. Like that

move with the dagger near the end of the meeting – plunging an unknown divine artifact into his

ectoplasmic form may have been intended to send us some kind of message, though I struggle to

figure out what it was, but more likely than not it was just him having a bit of a theatrical streak.”

“I did get the impression that he likes to brag, yeah,” Zorian agreed thoughtfully. “He seemed to

delight in drawing attention to his abilities, great age and other advantages. Like his insane mana

reserves, for instance.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Zach grumbled. “I guess now I know how people felt about me all this time.

But yeah, I think he’s pretty much what he advertises himself as: an old, incredibly powerful lich with

little concern about appearing humble or dignified. I think it’s partly because of his great age. I read

once that, contrary to what most people think, ancient peoples tended to be a lot more rude and

forthright than modern ones. A lot of immortals throughout history found it hard to keep up with

changing social mores. For instance, not that long ago people had very little concept of privacy and

thought nothing of having sex in the same room as their children. Public torture and executions were

considered to be almost akin to a free entertainment show you could visit rather than something

horrifying. And you heard yourself what Quatach-Ichl thought about the proper treatment of

conquered populace. In all likelihood, the way Quatach-Ichl behaves is a sort of compromise

between what he feels is reasonable based on the ancient environment he was raised in and what

he thinks he can get away with in the modern era.”

That was an interesting point. Zorian couldn’t help but remember that one time he decided to

describe the process of butchering animals to some of his classmates in Cyoria who had never been

outside the city. He was surprised and amused when he realized how horrified they were at his

description of how the animals were killed and processed. It seemed so silly and hypocritical to him,

since he was pretty sure they ate meat just fine and would continue to do so in the future.

And that was between people belonging to the same general age and culture. Quatach-Ichl probably

experienced this sort of thing magnified a hundredfold. Perhaps when Zach and Zorian told him

about how wrong it was to kill all these people in Cyoria, he thought of them the same way Zorian

did about those squeamish kids that couldn’t handle how their meals were prepared behind the

scenes.

“You know surprisingly much about the topic,” Zorian pointed.

“Back when I didn’t know when this time loop was going to end, I looked around for any information I

thought might be applicable to my situation,” Zach shrugged. “I was kind of going crazy from the

endless repetitions and I thought maybe the books about immortals and their ilk would be of help.

Unfortunately, it turned out our situations weren’t very comparable. It turns out most ageless people

think the world is changing too much and too fast for their tastes, not that everything is too cyclical or

boring or whatever.”

“I see,” Zorian said, leaning back. “So, just so we’re clear: we’re really doing this?”

“I think we should,” Zach confirmed. “It’s dangerous, yeah, but the gains would be so very sweet.

Doubly so because we’re effectively stealing knowledge from that bag of old bones…”

“The situation in this restart is not very good for what we talked about, though,” Zorian pointed out.

“The restart is more than halfway done by this point. If we’re going to try and get the most out of any

individual topic within the span of a single restart, we should wait for the next one to start.”

“I don’t think it would be wise to just ignore Quatach-Ichl in this restart, though,” Zach frowned. “He

will probably decide to move against us if he thinks he cannot turn us to his side somehow.”

“Yes, but I had another idea about that,” Zorian said. “What if… we recruited his help in breaking into

the Eldemar’s royal vault?”

Zach gave him a surprised look.

“That’s a pretty interesting idea, but how would we possibly divide the spoils?” Zach asked. “I mean,

both sides will want to claim the dagger in the end…”

“Well, no doubt Quatach-Ichl will try to betray us in the end in order to claim the dagger for himself,”

Zorian said. “But…”

“But that’s fine, because we want to fight him in the end,” Zach surmised.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “After all… how else can we get ahold of his crown?”

He just wondered how they were going to explain all this to Alanic. If he hated the idea of them

raiding Eldemar’s royal vaults and working with Silverlake, he was going to be positively thrilled with

their latest idea…

- break -

After a considerable amount of preparations, it was time for Zach and Zorian to assault the Ziggurat

of the Sun and try to claim the imperial ring that was supposed to reside somewhere inside. Their

forces for the task were relatively modest – aside from two of them and their simulacrums, they also

had Alanic, about 20 mercenary mages from the Xlotic region and a small army of golems that

Zorian had made specifically for the occasion.

They did not choose to arrive in the Pearl of Aranhal. The airship was ill suited to fight masses of

flying opponents like sulrothum, and it would get immediately recognized for what it was by the

mercenaries, which would cause all sort of issues down the line. They had enough trouble

convincing these people to cooperate with them in this seemingly crazy operation as it was.

Instead, they brought the whole group to their destination – a sulrothum outpost not far from the

ziggurat that Zorian’s simulacrum had secretly infiltrated and taken over a few hours earlier –

through the usage of dimensional gates. The display of such high-level magic did much to quell the

mercenaries’ concerns, which was a nice side-effect that neither Zach nor Zorian had really counted

on. They would have to remember in the future that implausible displays of magic did not just alarm

people, but could sometimes actually set them at ease.

After organizing themselves a little, the entire group was split into two. The first one, composed out

of all of the mercenaries, most of the golems and one simulacrum of Zach and Zorian each, was

ordered to march out of the sulrothum outpost and launch an obvious, frontal assault on the

structure. This was, of course, little more than a distraction… but a distraction that the sulrothum

probably wouldn’t be able to ignore.

According to the military personnel and sulrothum experts Zach and Zorian had talked to in the past

few days, humans usually dealt with sulrothum strongholds by bombarding them through artillery

magic from extreme range. Unfortunately, neither Zach nor Zorian were all that proficient with

artillery magic. It was a magical discipline designed for sieges and outright warfare, and typically

involved titanic amounts of mana being shaped by multiple mages acting in concert with one

another. Zach knew a bit about it, since his monstrous mana reserves allowed him to cast some

simple ones all by himself if he really needed to, but Zorian only had a theoretical grasp of the field.

Fortunately, the 20 mercenaries they hired were proficient with artillery spells and had experience in

anti-sulrothum tactics to boot.

The devil wasps had no choice but to come out of their base and confront them. Even if they

suspected the attack was a distraction, they had to assign at least some of their forces to disrupt the

bombardment.

After a few minutes, three more pairs of simulacrums, each group holding a Zach and a Zorian,

departed from the outpost under a magical cloak. Their job was to find their way into the ziggurat

and find where the imperial ring was located.

Meanwhile, the original Zach and Zorian, Alanic and the two most powerful golems patiently waited

for their moment…

- break -

Simulacrum number one nervously watched the cloud of giant black wasps on the horizon. It was his

job – as well as the job of Zach’s simulacrum and the many golems the original made for this day –

to defend the artillery mages from being harassed by the sulrothum so they could work in peace. In

general, their whole group was supposed to make itself as threatening as possible so the sulrothum

would have to send the majority of their forces out of the ziggurat, thus leaving it open and easily

infiltrated by the simulacrum teams. He was fine with that. However, how was he supposed to do

that when the damn devil wasps refused to attack and just kept flying back and forth out of their

attack range?

“What the hell are they doing?” the simulacrum asked the Zach-simulacrum beside him. “They can

clearly see that we’re setting up an artillery magic position here. Do they think we’re bluffing or

something?”

“No, I think they’re waiting for something,” Zach-simulacrum said. “An order from their leaders,

maybe? I think–”

A loud roar resounded in the distance and a huge serpentine form erupted out of the sand, directly

beneath the area the sulrothum swarm was flying at. No, not serpentine… worm-like. A huge brown

sand worm raised its head towards the sky, its toothy maw unfolded like a hellish, fleshy flower. As

for the devil wasps, they seemed to be… cheering?

“Damn it, they managed to tame a fully grown sandworm?” The leader of the mercenaries whined.

“That’s going to be a nightmare to fight.”

Simulacrum number one had to agree. Although he could easily detect incoming sandworm attacks

due to his mind sense, it was hard to deal with attacks that came from underground. Especially since

the sandworm was huge, meaning they had little chance of stopping its attacks and could only move

out of the way whenever they detected it coming.

“I have an idea,” Zach-simulacrum said, quickly performing an alteration spell that hardened the

sand beneath them into a stone platform and then raising it high into the sky.

“There,” Zach-simulacrum said, smiling. “It’s a bit expensive to maintain, but now the stupid thing

can no longer reach us. For all their huge size, sandworms are useless against things that can fly.”

He had barely finished speaking when the sandworm suddenly shook, almost like a dog trying to dry

itself off, and a series of translucent, glowing, yellow wings grew out of its sides. They were long and

paper-thin, reminiscent of dragonfly wings, and looked comically inappropriate for lifting a creature

like that into the air… but as the creature’s many golden wings started slowly undulating like oars on

a boat, the sandworm slowly lifted itself into the sky and then reoriented itself towards them.

Zach-simulacrum immediately deflated.

“Now this just isn’t fair,” he complained.

Simulacrum number one looked at the flying sandworm, which was currently flying towards them

while accompanied by a swarm of devil wasps and decided he couldn’t agree more.

- break -

Zorian stood in the ruins of the sulrothum outpost they arrived in, observing the state of the battle. In

the distance, Zach’s simulacrum was desperately trying to keep the giant, flying sandworm busy

while Zorian’s own simulacrum protected the mercenaries from the sulrothum swarm. Curiously,

when Zorian’s simulacrum tried to influence the sandworm’s mind, he found it completely impossible

to infiltrate. Usually he could at least make some headway when making such an attempt, even if the

creature was heavily magic resistant, but the sandworm’s consciousness seemed to be protected by

a mental equivalent of a stone wall – incredibly solid and unyielding. That was probably worth

checking out in more detail in future restarts.

In truth, he thought that part of the battle was going really well. Yes, the mercenary group failed to

get off all but one artillery spell and was constantly getting pushed back, but it served its job as a

distraction marvelously. The sulrothum even sent another swarm of warriors at them at one point,

trying to take them out sooner, which caused simulacrum number one to rant expletives at him over

their soul link for a full minute or so, but was pretty convenient for the plan as a whole.

No, the problem was that the simulacrum pairs sent to infiltrate the ziggurat weren’t doing so well.

Somehow the sulrothum discovered all three of them the moment they got close enough to the main

structure, which probably meant there was some kind of subtle alarm ward protecting it. One of the

teams then died trying to charge the front entrance, the other sacrificed itself to provide the third one

a chance to punch a new entrance through one of the outer walls of the ziggurat, and the third one

managed to get inside but was currently blocked in one of the corridors and would likely get

swarmed by the defenders soon.

On top of that, the sulrothum figured out where the original forces first appeared and decided to send

a group of warriors to check it out. That was how the outpost ended up in its current, ruined state.

“Although we haven’t found the ring, yet, it’s now or never. I’m commanding the simulacrum that

managed to get inside to open a gate for us. We’re going in.”

“Understood,” Alanic said solemnly.

“Finally,” Zach said, cracking his knuckles.

Zorian took a deep breath and waited, tapping into the soul link he had with his simulacrums and

paying close attention to his simulacrum inside the ziggurat. Opening a dimensional gate was a

lengthy process requiring a lot of concentration, which meant it took some time and effort for the

simulacrum to find himself in the position where he was able to do so. Finally, after using up all

fifteen of his remaining grenades in one massive attack and having Zach’s simulacrum charge

forward and sacrifice itself to get him some space, the simulacrum managed to successfully open a

dimensional passage between itself and the original.

Zorian sent his two remaining golems through the dimensional gate to clear the way, and then he,

Zach and Alanic all rushed inside.

There, they found a mangled artificial body of Zorian’s simulacrum that ended up sacrificing his

fleeting life to finish the spell in time. Rather than interrupt the gate-opening spell and save himself,

the simulacrum chose to ignore the incoming attack from one of the sulrothum warriors and kept

casting the spell till the very end.

Curiously, now that the two battle golems Zorian sent as a vanguard had cleared the entire corridor,

there were no more sulrothum coming. That final grenade attack and the arrival of a new batch of

invaders seemed to have caused them to temporarily withdraw and regroup.

“Let’s go,” Zorian said, pointing towards the corridor on the left.

“Any particular reason to go in that direction?” Zach asked. “I mean, that seems to be the place

where most of the devil wasps are coming from…”

“Yeah, it is,” Zorian admitted. “I don’t know where the ring is, but I’m operating under the idea that

our luck is horrible and thus our target is obviously in the most dangerous part of the ziggurat.”

“Oh,” Zach said. “Yeah, that does make sense.”

Zorian turned to Alanic walking next to them, who was ignoring their banter in favor of scanning the

walls for some reason. Probably looking for some clues as to where they are – all of the walls still

retained detailed carvings of various religious scenes. Most of them were from Ikosian era, but some

of them had been crudely ‘repurposed’ by the sulrothum, who did their best to modify the carvings

into something that fitted better with their own religious beliefs. Alanic was very unamused by their

efforts, if his deepening frown was of any indication.

“Alanic, we’re going to have to rely on you. Zach and I have been using our simulacrums to fight for

a while now, and we need some time to recover our mana reserves a little,” Zorian told him. “Do you

think you can–”

Two sulrothum warriors suddenly charged out of the corner in front of them, both of them carrying

spears and decorations that looked far fancier and better constructed than what they had

encountered thus far. They were probably elite warriors of the colony, and they screeched out a

challenge and charged at them the moment they saw them.

Alanic’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. He simply waved his battle staff lightly and two

tiny, highly compressed balls of fire flew forwards at incredible speeds. They impacted the warriors’

faces, burning a hole straight through them, and the two sulrothum died on the spot.

“Don’t worry,” Alanic said. “Leave it all to me.”

He had barely finished speaking when a literal horde of sulrothum converged all of a sudden.

The entire corridor erupted into burning flames.

- break -

After much bitter fighting and several temporary retreats, the group finally managed to achieve its

goal. One of the battle golems was rendered inert, the other was missing one of its arms and had

three spears sticking out of it and slowing it down, Alanic had received a nasty-looking wound across

his chest and Zach was almost out of mana.

But they had found it. They had found the imperial ring.

Unfortunately, they found it because the person wearing it decided to come to them. Apparently they

caused such a commotion that the sulrothum high priest decided to confront them personally,

accompanied by his highly-trained, well-equipped honor guard. He was a particularly large

sulrothum, equipped with menacing-looking bone armor and holding what was unmistakably a spell

staff. He was clearly a mage, and if the low-level magical aura he was emanating was of any

indication, probably a soul mage to boot.

He was also decorated with an absolutely ridiculous amount of little trinkets and various jewelry, one

of which was the imperial ring that he had on one of his hands. If Zorian didn’t have the marker’s

function to detect pieces of the Key, he would have never spotted it among all that junk the high

priest was wearing.

They couldn’t fight him. Maybe when they were in their top form, but not now. However, Zorian just

couldn’t bring himself to flee without at least trying to pull off one last thing…

He summoned most of his remaining mana and launched a massive mental attack on the high

priest. Just for a moment, he smashed aside his mental defenses, suppressed his will and forced

him to perform one simple action.

In one smooth movement, the high priest ripped the imperial ring off his finger and threw it at Zorian,

who immediately caught it in his free hand.

Then the effect was broken and the sulrothum high priest looked dumbfounded at what he had just

done.

“Zach, get us out of here now!” Zorian urged him.

Just before they teleported away, leaving their poor damaged battle golem behind as a distraction,

they heard a shrill, outraged scream from the high priest at the unfairness of it all.

Zorian nodded sagely in his heart. Yes, sometimes the world really was extremely unfair.

Chapter 083

Scorpion

Zach and Zorian were sitting in one of the many empty rooms in the Noveda mansion. This wasn’t

something that often happened. Despite this being his home, Zach didn’t like to spend too much time

in the place. Very few people lived there, relative to its size, which gave the mansion an empty,

almost abandoned atmosphere that Zach found uncomfortable. Even before the time loop, he liked

to spend most of his day outside, visiting friends and wasting time.

Zorian kind of wondered about these friends of Zach. He had never really seen Zach interact with

any of them through the restarts. From what Zach told him, though, most of them were in the same

situation as Benisek – kind of friendly with pre-time loop Zach, but not really that close to him and

very ill-suited for dealing with the implications of an endlessly repeating month. Much like Zorian

pretty much stopped interacting with Benisek, Zach seemed to have totally stopped bothering with

these casual friends he had once had. It was a bit sad, though maybe Zach intended to continue

interacting with them more heavily once he was out of the time loop…

Regardless, the reason for their uncharacteristic presence in the Noveda mansion was simple: the

place still had a well-crafted, perfectly functional warding scheme and the two of them didn’t feel like

traveling outside of Cyoria and creating a temporary base just to have this discussion. Thus, they

simply retreated into one of the private study rooms that could be found in the estate and hoped this

would be enough to foil any spying attempts by Quatach-Ichl or others.

The room was pretty nice. It was small but luxurious, with heavily decorated wooden furniture,

several marble statues, magical lighting and temperature control and bookshelves lining every single

wall. The center of the room contained a table and some chairs, and sitting in the center of that table

was the object that Zach and Zorian had gathered to discuss.

The ring. One of the pieces of the Key that they had to bring to the Guardian of the Threshold in

order to reopen the time loop exit and one of the artifacts associated with the first emperor of Ikosia.

It was made out of solid silver and largely featureless, with no notable decorations or gems. A few

faint lines and sigils covered its surface, only visible upon close scrutiny. It did not seem very

imperial, unlike the crown that Quatach-Ichl was wearing or the palace orb.

If they had not possessed the tracking function of the marker on their side, it would have been very

hard to pick it out as special from the rest of the small trinkets that the sulrothum high priest had

been carrying. Just like the palace orb, it seemed completely immune to divinations of any sort.

They already knew what it did. Maybe it was because they already had plenty of experience with the

palace orb, but figuring out how the ring functioned only took a visit to the Guardian of the Threshold

and half a day of tinkering with it. It was just that the end result was… not as useful as they had

hoped.

“Interesting thing, isn’t it?” Zach said, picking the ring up and making it spin on its edge like a top.

“Heh. Of course, it’s more useful for me than it is for you… but that may be a good thing. At least we

won’t have to struggle with the question of who to assign it to in the future, like we do with the palace

orb!”

Zorian clacked his tongue at the analysis. The ring had an intriguing main function: it somehow

granted the wearer an ability to use soul perception through it. As far as Zorian knew, there was no

other item with a similar function, which made the ring quite interesting and unique… but also very

useless for people like him who had already unlocked soul perception through other means.

Zach, of course, was another story. Due to the safeguards on his marker, unlocking his soul

perception was anything but easy. Most methods to do so required one to be brought to the very

edge of death and tampered deeply with the user’s soul to achieve their goal. The soul perception

potion Silverlake made for Zorian did the same, which was why they had not bothered to have Zach

try it out thus far. They just didn’t think it would work and didn’t want to cut a restart short for now.

The soul perception ring basically negated any need for such dangerous unlocking, giving Zach a

way to practice soul magic easily.

Frankly, Zorian suspected the ring was created specifically with the goal of solving this kind of issue.

Since it was extremely difficult for a controller with an intact marker to unlock their soul perception

through classical means, it made sense for Shutur-Tarana to prepare a workaround for his

successor.

“It’s a bit inconvenient that the ring is so hard to get to, though,” Zorian remarked. “The ring only

grants you soul perception while you wear it. No ring, no soul perception. If you started each restart

with the ring on you, like the controller was probably supposed to, then that would be a minor issue.

As it is, it will take us a week at minimum to get ahold of it in each restart, and that’s after optimizing

things…”

“Yes, that does suck,” Zach agreed. “I definitely intend to try and figure out a way to gain soul

perception ‘the right way’, so that I don’t need to depend on it, but this is still good. I doubt finding an

alternative will be easy and we know from your example that simply unlocking soul perception is just

the first step in the process and that a lot of training is needed to use it – with this, I can get started

on that right away.”

“I guess that’s true,” Zorian nodded. A part of him was annoyed that Zach got to skip a large chunk

of the work Zorian had to do to gain his soul perception ability, but he knew that was just his jealousy

talking and that this was objectively a good thing. “It still feels to me like the ring is relatively

underwhelming, at least compared to the other two examples we know about. Even its time loop

related skill is not that exciting.”

Like all Key pieces, the soul perception ring had an ability that could only be accessed inside the

time loop by the current controller. Specifically, the ring could place a tracking marker on target

souls, allowing the ring bearer to track their movements with ease. According to the Guardian of the

Threshold, the markers persisted across restarts, allowing them to know exactly where people

started their restarts and what their usual routines were.

Or at least that’s the effect they would have had if Zach and Zorian had started the restart with the

ring. Since they hadn’t, the value of the tracking markers was greatly reduced.

In any case, Zach and Zorian had tested the ability on various animals and random bystanders and

found that the marker placement was fast and stealthy, that the ring could keep track of marked

entities across intercontinental distances, and that divination wards didn’t seem to hamper the effect

in any way.

This sounded pretty amazing, and it was, but the markers had a serious flaw. Namely, anyone

skilled in soul magic could detect when they were placed on them. This meant that Quatach-Ichl was

effectively immune to it, as was Sudomir, Silverlake and a whole plethora of other potential targets.

“They can’t all be amazing,” Zach shrugged. “And truthfully, I think the real issue is less with the

usefulness of the ring and more with how late we got ahold of it. If I had the ring with me right from

the very start, it would have been an absolutely priceless treasure. The tracking ability alone would

have saved me a ton of work and some dying. Currently, we’re both so good at divinations, memory

reading, stealth spells, various tracking magics and things like teleportation that the ring is no longer

very impressive to us. But that’s just us being awesome, not the ring being underwhelming.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully. There was a lot of truth in that.

“Besides, it may be a good idea to place these tracking markers on all of the high ranking cultists

and Ibasans to see if they’re doing something we don’t know about,” Zach said.

“That would take quite a bit of effort, though,” Zorian pointed out. “The ring just gives you the

distance and direction of your target, and only one at a time as well. You’d have to constantly pay

attention to the ring, cycling through all of the tracking markers and matching the information you

receive to places on the map to see where they actually are in actually useful terms. Then you’d

have to go out personally to check up on any interesting movements to see the details of what is

going on, or send a simulacrum, and–”

“You’ve done more complicated projects before, Zorian,” Zach said, waving him off.

Zorian raised an eyebrow at him.

“You… do realize it’s you who will be doing this, right?” he asked Zach. “After all, you’re the one

who’s going to be wearing the ring. What with you needing its soul perception granting abilities…”

The look on Zach’s face when he realized he just dumped a huge amount of work in his own lap was

truly priceless.

- break -

Although Zach and Zorian had successfully retrieved the imperial ring from the Ziggurat of the Sun

and found out what it did, there was no time for celebration. Quatach-Ichl’s surprise visit had

completely changed the dynamics of their current restart, and they had to prepare. One of these

preparations was gathering everyone’s research notes and the like. Normally this would be done just

before the very end of the restart, but since there was so much chance of things going wrong this

time around, Zorian decided to speed things up a little.

At the moment, this meant visiting Kael in his basement alchemy lab to see how his projects were

progressing. This would be normally rather mundane, but nothing seemed to be entirely mundane in

this particular restart. Apparently Silverlake had figured out who Kael was at some point in the restart

and had talked to him a few times already. Sadly for Silverlake, Kael had given her a chilly reception.

Their previous interaction seemed to have left a bad impression on Kael, something that did not

surprise Zorian in the very least, so he was not at all eager to reacquaint himself with her. The fact

that she showed unhealthy interest in his daughter Kana, due to her witch roots, probably didn’t help.

Sadly for Kael, though, that didn’t deter Silverlake in the slightest, and she decided to barge in on this

meeting to give them both her personal opinion on what Kael had been doing all this time.

“It’s terrible,” she stated without preamble.

Zorian had pretty much expected that. Kael probably did too, but he was too much personally

invested into his project to just ignore the provocation.

“It’s not terrible,” Kael said in a clipped tone, not even bothering to look at her. “There, now it’s your

word against mine. What now?”

“Now I win, because I’m a wise, experienced witch and you aren’t,” Silverlake said smugly. “Really, I

don’t understand why you’re so angry with me. Are you really still so angry about the way I spoke to

you back when we first met? Don’t be so petty! They’re just words. I guess I was a little harsh, but

can you blame me? Fria totally broke the rules when she took you under her wing and taught you all

these things. A harsh word or two is really nothing compared to what I could have done… bah, kids

these days don’t know what’s good for them.”

“It’s not terrible,” Kael repeated, completely ignoring her attempts to pick on their shared past. “In

fact, the potions and the research I have produced over the restarts are so good that they produce

an uproar among Cyoria’s medical and alchemical community if I release them too carelessly.”

“Well I’m not saying it’s worthless,” Silverlake clarified. “But considering the amount of resources you

had at your disposal and the sheer advantage given to you by the time loop… it’s underwhelming.

It’s terrible. So many missed opportunities. So much lost potential.”

Zorian did not try to inject himself into their bickering, but Silverlake’s statement made him frown. No

doubt Kael’s methods could be better than they were, but what exactly was she talking about? In his

personal opinion, Kael’s work was pretty incredible.

Back at the beginning, when Kael had told him he wanted to research things with the help of the time

loop, Zorian had agreed to help, but didn’t really think Kael’s work would have any wider impact. He

knew this would be a tremendous personal boon for Kael, of course, allowing him to figure out the

best recipes and production methods for known potions. The sort of thing that established

alchemists don’t share with anyone except their apprentices. But affecting the medical field as a

whole? He knew that Kael was something of a young genius that had been specifically recruited by

the academy because the folk healing remedies he had been producing to support himself and his

daughter were good enough to get some influential people to take notice, but still. Alchemy was a

very profitable occupation and many alchemy-based Houses and organizations had experienced,

well-funded researchers on their payroll. What could one beginner alchemist, working in his

basement, do that they could not?

Indeed, at first Kael focused primarily on improving his personal alchemical technique. He

experimented with replacing expensive alchemical components with cheaper ones, with increasing

potency of the standard cures, with cutting down the production time and skipping certain steps…

small things, but they added up. They added up in ways that Zorian honestly hadn’t expected. It

turned out this sort of production optimization was rarely done on such a small, personal scale by the

big alchemical groups. They usually produced their potions in large batches, so figuring out the best

recipes and production procedures by a single alchemist working on an individual potion or two was

of very limited usefulness to them. Plus, if something could be done by a lone alchemist with a

relatively cheap setup, it was much easier for it to be stolen by outsiders or leaked by angry former

employees and so on. Thus, they rarely invested too much into that kind of research.

Granted, there were no doubt plenty of individual alchemists that worked exclusively with small scale

setups, and they had done plenty of research on their own… but they rarely shared these insights

with anyone who wasn’t family or a chosen successor, and many times ended up taking them to

their grave. The fact that Kael had done years of research, funded by considerable resources and in

cooperation with many individual alchemists and Healers that Zach and Zorian had helped him

contact, and was entirely willing to release it to the public… it was a lot more important than Zorian

realized.

This wasn’t all, of course. Thanks to the support Zorian had given him, Kael was eventually able to

be much more ambitious in his projects. Though he still pursued simple refinement of the production

process, he had already picked most of the low-lying fruit in that regard. Now he was going after

things like trying to combine several medical potions into one, experimental self-diagnosis potions

that allowed a person to feel the state of their body with great clarity, and attempted cures for

diseases that didn’t have any accessible cures on the market. Of course, Zorian had a feeling this

last one was what Kael really wanted to focus on. The death of his wife and mentor during the

Weeping had clearly left a great mark on him, and seemed to serve as his primary motivation to try

so hard in his alchemical pursuits. But these sort of ambitious projects were quite hard, and Kael

was having very limited success there. Especially since, in every single restart, Kael had to re-

familiarize himself with what he had been working on before he began building upon it.

“Missed opportunities, huh?” Kael said, leveling Silverlake with an unamused glare. “So what would

you have done in my place, then?”

“For starters, I would have been far more liberal and unrestrained with human experimentation,”

Silverlake told him immediately.

Both Kael and Zorian flinched at this.

“Oh, look at you two babies!” Silverlake cackled. “You’re living in a time loop, are you not? When are

you going to do human experimentation if not now? You are surrounded by perfect test subjects!

Any damage you do will be conveniently wiped out at the end of the month and you have the

unprecedented ability to test various versions of a medical potion on the exact same patient without

your previous attempts affecting the later ones and muddying the waters in regards to which one is

really better. Really, it’s practically criminal that you’re not taking advantage of this…”

“First of all, I don’t care that I’m trapped inside a time loop and people won’t really suffer and die – I

did not go down this path to hurt people,” Kael told her firmly. “Secondly, even if I didn’t balk at this

on ethical grounds, it’s still a terrible idea. The other alchemists and healers aren’t stupid. Any potion

developed through unchecked human experimentation will be obvious as such – people will surely

realize that I couldn’t have possibly developed such a potion without going through an inordinate

amount of test subjects and send the authorities to check up on me.”

“At which point they will find absolutely nothing, because you did everything in the time loop, erasing

all the evidence,” Silverlake said. “They’re just accusations. Just keep insisting you’re a genius and

you figured it all out in a dream or something equally absurd. You’re way too skittish. I think you’ll

find that a lot of powerful people won’t care that you’ve done everything nicely and according to law.

So long as you make too many waves they will want you under control or gone.”

Kael was silent for a few seconds.

“You might be right,” Kael conceded after a while. “But I don’t care. I already said my main problem

is with the ethics of the whole thing, not whether or not I can get away with it in the end.”

Silverlake glanced at Zorian.

“No way,” Zorian said, shaking his head. He had seen just how messed up ‘unrestrained’ human

testing can get while trawling through Sudomir’s memories. While Silverlake probably had a lot tamer

things in mind than that, he’d rather not risk it.

Silverlake ignored him, tapping her chin with her finger and muttering something that sounded

suspiciously like ‘if you want to do something right, you’ve got to do it yourself’. This being Silverlake,

though, Zorian had no idea if she was being serious or was just trying to piss him off.

“Well, never mind that, then,” Silverlake shrugged. “Second idea, then. Did you two ever

contemplate recruiting governments for help? They already have existing logistics and infrastructure,

and the amount of resources even a minor statelet has at its disposal is vast.”

“Yes, but we decided against it in the end,” Zorian said. “Governments do things very slowly. Getting

them to commit to anything worthwhile would take far more than a month, unless I was willing to use

mind magic to speed things up. Which I’m not.”

“Ah, but I wasn’t suggesting you try to negotiate a deal with them or beg for handouts,” Silverlake

said with a grin. “All you have to do is ‘leak’ your potion formulas, research notes and other secrets

to various governments and their research teams. Make it seem like they originate from their rivals

and bitter enemies to light a fire under their ass and then simply stand back and watch what they do

with it all. No need to convince them of anything – just dump things into their lap and swoop in at the

end of the month to steal all their work.”

That… might actually work.

“Huh,” Zorian said. “You do raise a good point there.”

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Kael said. “She’ll be absolutely insufferable from now on.”

Silverlake just cackled in obvious satisfaction.

“Well then,” she said. “Do you want to hear the rest of my ideas?”

- break -

Once all of the preparations had been done, Zach and Zorian went to the address Quatach-Ichl had

given them to contact him.

They had already discreetly checked the place out earlier and knew the place was actually a just a

small, seemingly-innocuous corner store. The ancient lich had never given them any secret phrases

or contact methods, so they were a little mystified as to what they were supposed to do when they

arrived there. Just call for Quatach-Ichl by name? However, it turned out that they need not have

worried. The man behind the counter seemed to immediately know who they were and what they

were at the moment he saw them. He pointed them towards a door to the storage room, which

wasn’t actually a storage room, where Quatach-Ichl had already been waiting for them. His black,

metallic-looking skeleton just sat there on a chair in one corner of the room, tapping his fingers

against his leg bone and observing them as they approached.

Well. That was kind of creepy. How the hell had the lich known they were coming? Surely he hadn’t

spent the whole day here, just in case they decided to drop by…?

“Wow, you were waiting for us all this time?” Zach said loudly, bluntly drawing attention to the fact.

“We must really mean a lot to you.”

“I left a spare body in here and ‘jumped in’, so to speak, when I was informed you were coming

over,” Quatach-Ichl said, rising from his chair and making a few casual gestures in the air. A cloud of

ectoplasm rapidly condensed around the black bones and then solidified into a familiar fleshy guise.

He smiled at them lightly. “Still… I will admit I was rather looking forward to this. After speaking to

you that day, I couldn’t help but check up on some things and I must say you’re even more unusual

than I thought.”

“Oh?” Zach prompted.

“For instance, there is no evidence that you are anything other than regular human teenagers,”

Quatach-Ichl said. “I thought, before seeing you up-close, that you may be shapeshifters or

possessor entities wearing teenage bodies. Having seen how perfectly your souls slot into your

forms, I can effectively rule that out. I have also managed to get a better glimpse at what you are

doing and I have to say… you are even more capable than I thought you were. It is really curious

that you have managed to amass so much magical skill, money and contacts while being so

young… and even more importantly, while evading the notice of people who keep an eye out for

such things.”

“Well, those people clearly aren’t very good at their job because someone managed to organize an

entire invasion right under their noses,” Zach deadpanned. “In comparison to that, overlooking a

couple of precocious teens is a minor matter, don’t you think?”

“Ha! There is a lot of truth in what you’re saying,” Quatach-Ichl laughed. “The security around here is

terrible. Still, the only reason we have been able to pull this off is that we have many of the local

authorities infiltrated and that I secretly take care of… problematic elements. We are not completely

undetected in the way you two appear to be. Furthermore, we are operating in ‘impossible’ fashion,

using magics that nobody is aware are possible, and we have only recently ramped up our activities

to their present level.”

“So have we,” Zach pointed out. “If you’ve been observing our activities as closely as you claim to

have, you’ve surely realized we only started to ramp up after seeing you do the same.”

“That’s a curious way to put it,” Quatach-Ichl said, cocking his head to the side in a questioning

manner. “As far as I can tell, you didn’t just ramp up your activities… it’s more like you hardly

even existed up until a few weeks ago. And many things you’re pursuing have no conceivable

connection to stopping us.”

There was a brief silence as both sides quietly studied each other and their reactions.

“Well,” Zorian said eventually. “I hope you don’t expect an answer from us in that regard.”

“Oh no, of course not,” Quatach-Ichl said, shaking his head. “I’m just thinking out loud, that’s all. So.

I presume you have an offer for me, yes?”

“Yes,” Zach nodded. “We want you to help us break into Eldemar’s royal treasury and retrieve the

imperial artifact stored there.”

Quatach-Ichl gave them an incredulous look.

“Alright, you’ve got me there,” he said after a second. “I honestly didn’t expect that at all.”

What followed was an exhaustive, two hour long session of questions and answers where Zach and

Zorian tried to prove to the ancient lich that they weren’t crazy for trying to pull this off. They showed

Quatach-Ichl the various building plans and other information that they had gathered about the royal

treasury in the past, pointing out that they already did most of the work and just needed his help with

overcoming a few final hurdles.

They weren’t lying, either. They actually already knew how to bypass most of the defenses without

being detected, it was just that the final stretch of defenses was extremely closely guarded and was

basically impossible to breach in secret. As far as they could tell, any opening of the treasury was

automatically a big deal and sent an alarm to people in charge of defending it. This was even true for

when the royals were going in. It was just that the official openings were always announced well in

advance, so the guards knew to ignore the alarm in those occasions. Thus, Zach and Zorian needed

to fight their way in after a certain point, stay inside long enough to find and claim the dagger, and

then escape without getting trapped inside. This was beyond them at the moment, but if they had

help from someone on the level of Quatach-Ichl, it might be enough for them to succeed.

Quatach-Ichl initially thought the idea of assaulting the royal treasury was stupid and bound to fail.

He even accused them of trying to get him to sabotage his own invasion plot by drawing attention to

himself in this manner. However, greed was a powerful motivator and once Quatach-Ichl realized

that the break-in had a large chance of actually being successful, he started to seriously consider it.

There was a big problem with the negotiations, of course. Both sides wanted the imperial dagger.

Sure, the royal treasury no doubt held all kinds of valuable treasures and documents, but very few of

them were priceless in the same way that the dagger was. Quatach-Ichl had lived for more than a

thousand years, and had all the money and mundane wealth he could possibly wish for. Some of the

other artifacts stored inside could potentially be interesting, but it wasn’t a sure thing and they

wouldn’t have time to sift through them all to pick the cream of the crop. No matter what they offered,

Quatach-Ichl wouldn’t budge in the slightest. As far as he was concerned, they could have anything

else in the treasury, so long as he got the one thing he truly cared about – the imperial dagger itself.

Truthfully, this was all according to plan. Zach and Zorian always knew Quatach-Ichl wouldn’t agree

on a deal that would involve him giving up an imperial artifact. In fact, Zorian strongly suspected that

Quatach-Ichl would immediately attack them once they were outside to claim the imperial orb from

them as well. However, so long as they managed to break into the royal treasury proper, they did not

care much. Even if they failed to wrest the dagger and the crown away from the lich in the aftermath,

the whole thing would still have been worth it. This was because getting into the inside of the

treasury would give them a chance to analyze the main wardstone that protected the entire complex,

hopefully letting them outright bypass the defenses in the future.

Thus, they eventually ‘reluctantly’ agreed to let Quatach-Ichl claim the dagger in exchange for the

first-claim right on everything else they encountered inside.

Quatach-Ichl gave them a strange look after that, not saying anything for a while, before suddenly

turning more jovial and praising them for their ‘sensible attitude’. Half an hour later they hammered

out a deal and agreed to meet in two days in Eldemar City…

- break -

Zach and Zorian were calmly walking through the treasury corridor, escorted by four stony-faced

guards. They ignored the guards and employees they occasionally encountered along the way,

behaving like their presence was completely natural. Three times they encountered invisible

detection fields that would have announced their presence to ward supervisors deeper inside the

treasury complex, and it took less than two minutes for Zorian to subvert each one into letting them

pass without alerting anyone. After a while, they encountered an actual security checkpoint with a

couple of mages and gun-wielding soldiers. Zach just casually greeted the group while Zorian

flashed an access badge in front of their faces without saying anything. The guards gave them

questioning, uncertain looks but didn’t bar their path. There was no official visit to the treasury

scheduled, but the group was escorted by guards and had the symbol of royal authority. The group

continued on.

Quatach-Ichl trailed after those two, observing everything curiously. After they put some distance

between themselves and the security checkpoint, he decided to speak up.

“The mystery grows,” he commented, glancing at the four guards marching beside them. “These

guards you have dominated into helping us have very few giveaways that they are being

manipulated into doing this. No jerky movements, no hesitation… other than being a little overly

serious, there is no clue they are being controlled by another. I had no idea you were such a capable

mind mage. If you had such abilities, wouldn’t it be easier to manipulate someone with legitimate

access to this place into secretly retrieving the dagger for you?”

“Impractical,” Zorian said simply. He didn’t want to explain that his ability to control people was really

quite limited. He may be a powerful mind mage, but he never invested much effort into figuring out

how to execute those kinds of long-term compulsions. Even the aranea considered that kind of ‘deep

mind editing’ to be sinister and repellent, to say nothing of himself. His specialty was telepathic

combat and memory reading, not enslavement.

“You know, Ulquaan Ibasa has much more relaxed laws regarding mind magic than any country on

the continent,” Quatach-Ichl lightly commented.

“Are you seriously trying to recruit me at a time like this?” Zorian asked incredulously.

“I’m just pointing out you’d get a lot more appreciation for your skills if you emigrated there,”

Quatach-Ichl shrugged.

Zorian said nothing in response. They soon reached the point of no return – the doorway that could

not be opened without throwing the entire treasury into high alert.

Even opening the door was not easy. It was incredibly sturdy, as were the walls it was attached to –

they could not be battered down with raw force or blown off their hinges. Two keys were required in

order to open it, neither of which could be safely acquired, and using them required the presence of

the Chief Treasurer, who had to lower the local wards in order for the keys to work. Even if

everything was done correctly, the treasury opening alarm would still sound, and defenders would

swarm over to see what was going on if no opening had been scheduled for the day.

There were other entrances to the royal treasury, including a ‘secret’ one that could be accessed

through the dungeon, but all were defended just as heavily.

At the moment, the only solution Zach and Zorian had for this door was to outright attack the local

wards until they shut down and then use the copies of the two keys they had produced earlier to

open the door. Which kind of worked, but the local wards were no joke. Bringing them down was a

very time consuming process for the two of them, leaving them low on mana and beset by every

defender in the building.

“We’re going to need your help here, as discussed,” Zorian told the ancient lich.

Quatach-Ichl simply nodded absent-mindedly, studying the door in front of him.

Then they began. All three of them started assaulting the warding scheme, subverting, negating and

pushing back the defensive field. Zach and Zorian were both very good at defeating wards by now,

but Quatach-Ichl completely blew them out of the competition there… and not just because of his

monstrous mana reserves, either. His skill at dismantling magical defenses was incredible. In

retrospect, it probably wasn’t that unusual. The lich had been alive for more than a thousand years.

He probably had deep knowledge and sophistication about every form of magic there was.

The warding scheme did not take their aggression passively. It was the type of ward that actively

struck back against attackers and it pushed back against them endlessly. Waves of telekinetic

pressure and temperature extremes assaulted them, strange rainbow light tried to put them to sleep

and nearby decorative wall tiles exploded into clouds of miniature razors. They were undaunted.

Zach and Zorian had known those defenses were there before they had even started, and all three

of them were capable of easily defending themselves from attacks on this level.

By now, the entire treasury was in high alert and the first defenders were starting to approach them

at high speed. Zach was about to direct some of his energies into dealing with them when Quatach-

Ichl casually swept his arm backwards and fired one of those jagged red beams he was so fond of

using onto the ceiling behind them. He must have hit something critical because the entire section of

the corridor immediately caved in, showering everything in a thick cloud of dust and gravel and

cutting them off from the approaching first wave of defenders.

“Pointless distractions,” Quatach-Ichl said curtly. “Just focus on the wards.”

The wards didn’t last long after that. Once they were gone, Zach and Zorian inserted the keys into

the door, which started to slowly open with a heavy grinding sound. There was no way to speed this

up, but they didn’t have to wait for it to fully open. The moment a small crack was produced between

the door and the wall, Quatach-Ichl used some strange dimensional spell to twist the resulting

opening into a man-sized portal. Zorian decided he really needed to learn that spell. Being able to

effectively squeeze through even the tiniest opening was pretty neat.

Once they were through, they were faced with another problem. A pair of huge, hulking golems

made out of some kind of glossy black material barred their path. They both held strange shotgun-

like guns that fired metallic webs instead of bullets and they were incredibly resilient. They were

clearly intended to keep intruders busy rather than actually kill them, so Zorian didn’t think it was a

good idea to try and tangle with them.

He deployed the palace orb, retrieved a pair of huge golems out of it and sent them to keep the

treasury golems busy while they continued on.

“Interesting golem design,” Quatach-Ichl commented. “I don’t recognize the manufacturer.”

After a second of thinking, Zorian decided he felt like bragging a little.

“I made them,” he admitted.

“Oh? A man of many talents, I see,” Quatach-Ichl said. “I must admit I always thought golem making

was just a squeamish man’s necromancy, but recent advances in the field are pretty impressive.

Perhaps I might commission some work from you in the future.”

The actual treasury wasn’t just one giant room filled with gold coins and priceless magical artifacts,

like Zorian had idly imagined. Instead it consisted of numerous individual vaults, each with its own

reinforced door that had to be battered down to claim the contents inside. Nothing was clearly

labeled, which meant that finding anything specific was a total chore unless you knew exactly where

to go. Since Zach and Zorian had a marker that let them sense the dagger’s location, though, it

wasn’t long before they managed to track it down. Quatach-Ichl claimed it immediately for himself,

giving them a challenging look. The two of them had no intention of fighting the lich for the dagger,

though. Or at least not in this place.

In any case, this dagger wasn’t the only thing they wanted out of this place. They also wanted to

locate the main ward stone of this place and it wouldn’t hurt to also smash up a few more vaults to

see if there was something particularly interesting inside. They both made a handful of simulacrums

and sent them to scatter all over the place… but were caught a little off-guard when Quatach-Ichl

proceeded to create enough simulacrums to accompany each one of theirs.

Apparently he did not trust them to have even their simulacrums out of sight. Or maybe he was just

that curious about what they were up to. Either way, they decided not to make a big deal out of it and

simply went about their work.

Eventually, they managed to find the main wardstone. It was hidden under the metal floor and

shielded from most divinations, but Zorian managed to track it down anyway. He didn’t have enough

time to study it in great detail, and it couldn’t be moved without destroying it, but even that brief

examination gave him plenty of ideas for the future. The treasury wardstone was a real work of art,

and Zorian definitely intended to come here again to take a few more looks at it.

As for the vaults, they held all sorts of wealth, rare materials and mysterious items… but it was really

hard to figure out what was truly useful to them and what wasn’t in the short amount of time they

had. They ended up piling everything they recovered into the palace orb for later study and just

forgot about them for now.

“That orb is much bigger and more convenient than I thought it would be,” Quatach-Ichl’s

simulacrum mused idly beside. “I think I may have underestimated its usefulness just a little.”

Quatach-Ichl actually had his own pocket dimension containers, but they were apparently a lot less

expansive than their own, which meant he had to be much more selective about what to take from

the place than they were.

Of course, the Eldemarian guards and military were anything but idle while they were doing that. It

was less than five minutes before they managed to break through the collapsed corridor and four

giant golems wrestling each other in the middle of a corridor, and then the fighting began.

In all honesty, they had probably stayed too long inside the treasury. Too many forces had rushed to

the place, making it very hard for them to fight their way out and escape. They couldn’t simply open

a gate to outside with the simulacrum trick, because apparently the treasury wards were thorough

enough to shut that idea down. The ward stone was too tough to be destroyed in any reasonable

amount of time. If it were just Zach and Zorian, this may very well have been the end of this

particular restart.

However, they had Quatach-Ichl on their side, and he had apparently already prepared a

contingency for this kind of situation.

The only warning Zach and Zorian received about what was about to happen was when the sounds

of distant screams and detonations started resounding in the distance, as if the treasury defenders

were fighting another enemy outside as well as them. Before they could ask Quatach-Ichl what was

happening, a nearby wall collapsed as a huge sphere of black metallic bones slammed directly into it

and crushed it under its weight.

The sphere quickly uncoiled into a large, crocodilian skeleton that swept through nearby space with

its tail, sending treasury defenders flying away like wooden toys. Fireballs, force blades,

disintegration beams and a wide variety of grenades rained down on it immediately afterwards.

Some of them were even doing damage.

But it was too little, too late. Before their attacks could deal anything more than superficial scratches,

it noticed Quatach-Ichl and immediately barreled towards him.

“Please tell me that’s a friend,” Zach said.

“Ha! You can say it’s a pet of sorts,” Quatach-Ichl laughed. “Jump on it when it gets close and make

sure you hold on. If you let go, you’re on your own. There is no way I’m coming back for you.”

If someone had told Zorian a few years earlier that he would be riding through the streets of Eldemar

on the back of a giant skeletal crocodile-thing, after having robbed the royal treasury in the company

of a thousand-year-old lich… well, he would have told them that they have an overactive

imagination. Yet, that was exactly what had happened. Zach, Zorian and Quatach-Ichl managed to

fight their way out of the treasury while riding the lich’s ‘pet’ and simply kept rushing forward. By the

end the poor crocodile thing ended up falling apart, having sacrificed itself to save them from one

last coordinated spell barrage by the Eldemarian military, but by then they had already left the radius

of the city wards and teleported away.

Now for the hardest part: dealing with Quatach-Ichl…

- break -

Zach, Zorian and Quatach-Ichl were hiding inside a small cave under a random field. It had been

more than half a day since they had broken into the royal treasury, and they had the exact same

problem that Zach and Zorian had had when they had made their attempt at the treasury in the past

– somehow, the Eldemar forces were tracking them down everywhere they went.

[How annoying,] Zach commented to Zorian telepathically. [I was specifically paying attention for

something like this and I never noticed any sort of tracking mark being placed on us or on any of our

possessions.]

[I can’t detect anything being done to our souls, either,] Zorian replied. [It’s really frustrating. How

exactly can they track us so unerringly? They clearly don’t know our actual identities, just like they

hadn’t known in the previous restart we’ve done this, so it must be something like a tracking mark or

magical tether. We’re both experienced with detecting those kind of things, so why can’t we find it?]

Quatach-Ichl, who was currently sitting on the floor of the cave in complete silence, looked like he

was engaged in some kind of intense meditation. Zorian could tell through his soul perception,

however, that Quatach-Ichl seemed to be doing some rather intense personal soul searching. He

could tell because the lich’s soul was usually perfectly calm and controlled, but now it churned and

pulsed as if caught in a storm. Presumably the lich thought the tracking method had been placed on

their souls and was trying to locate it. Zorian had done the same with no results, so he didn’t get his

hopes up that Quatach-Ichl would find anything this way, but it was worth a shot. At least he wasn’t

flipping out and trying to kill them for dragging him into this mess.

Maybe if they–

“It’s a tether made out of divine energies,” Quatach-Ichl suddenly said, rising from the floor of the

cave and dusting himself off.

“Divine energies?” Zorian repeated incredulously.

“Like the ones that make up my soul stabilization frame and power divine artifacts,” Quatach-Ichl

said. “There must be an item somewhere in that building that automatically connects to the soul of

any being that comes within a certain distance of it. How insidious. If I didn’t have so much

experience sensing the piece of divine magic in my own soul, I would have never been able to detect

it.”

Damn it, divine magics were so unfair. No wonder they hadn’t been able find the way the Eldemar

authorities were tracking them…

“Can you sever it?” Zach asked.

Quatach-Ichl shook his head. “Perceiving divine energies is one thing. Affecting them is another. I

have no way to get rid of the tether, although I can tell it’s not permanent. It will eventually weaken

and fade away.”

“Eventually being…?” Zach tried.

“A couple of weeks at least,” Quatach-Ichl said calmly.

“You are too calm,” Zorian pointed out. “Clearly you have already found a solution.”

“Yes,” Quatach-Ichl said smugly. “The tether may be made out of divine energies, but it ultimately

has the same weakness that all such magical tethers have – a maximum distance it can support

before it snaps. If we go outside the range of the item we are tethered to, the magic will break and

we’ll be free to enjoy our ill-gotten gains.”

“Ah,” Zach said. “Wow, this is easier than we thought, then!”

“Of course, being made by a divine artifact, the tether no doubt has a downright absurd maximum

range it can support… and Eldemar’s authorities will probably take the anchor item out of the

treasury to keep us in range of the effect if they notice us trying to break the tether this way. So not

only do we have to travel extremely far away from here, we must do it so quickly that Eldemar’s

authorities cannot keep up with us.”

Zach and Zorian looked at each other before turning back to the grinning lich. He probably thought

he had them – that they had no method of traversing vast distances quickly enough and that he

would be able to squeeze some kind of concession out of them in exchange for helping them break

the tethers on their own souls.

Well… he was wrong.

“I don’t see the issue here,” Zorian shrugged.

“No?” Quatach-Ichl asked. “I’m not sure you understand… just teleporting around a little isn’t–”

“No, we get it,” interjected Zach. “It’s just that, no matter how ridiculous the range of this tether is,

going to Xlotic is probably enough to make it snap. And if not that, then we can just continue on to

Koth instead.”

Quatach-Ichl stared at them with an uncertain look on his face.

“Do you want to come with us?” Zorian asked innocently. “It probably isn’t so easy for you to put so

much distance between yourself and Eldemar on such a short notice.”

“Yeah, you’ve helped us a lot tonight, so it’s only right for us do something for you too,” Zach

nodded, playing along.

They didn’t actually expect Quatach-Ichl to agree to their suggestion. After all, going with them

involved stepping through a dimensional portal without knowing where it really led. That wasn’t

something you did unless you thoroughly trusted the other person, and Quatach-Ichl didn’t even trust

them enough to leave their simulacrums wandering around unsupervised.

They opened a portal to Xlotic, and Quatach-Ichl followed after them, surprisingly calm. He did not

comment at all on the fact they knew how to cast something as rare and difficult as a dimensional

gate, or the fact they arranged for said gate to open to another continent on a moment’s notice. He

simply observed everything around them, his eyes sweeping over the desert horizon with a

thoughtful expression.

“Cities to rubble, fields to dust…” he murmured quietly. “What a depressing sight.”

Hum. Zorian had never really thought about it before, but Quatach-Ichl was probably the only living

person that had seen Xlotic as it had been before the Cataclysm.

In any case, Quatach-Ichl then closed his eyes and once more started sensing his soul for the

tether. He opened his eyes ten minutes later and nodded to them.

“It’s gone now,” he said. His voice was devoid of any trace of joy or satisfaction, though, which set

off some alarms in Zorian’s mind. “Apparently Xlotic is far enough that the tether ended up breaking

when we crossed over here through the gate. Or maybe once the gate closed behind us. Can the

tether maintain connection through a dimensional gate, even if the people are far outside its range in

terms of actual distance? Interesting stuff. Too bad this is hard to reproduce and study. And too bad

none of this is real, no?”

Zorian couldn’t stop himself from flinching a little at that statement. Quatach-Ichl narrowed his eyes

at the movement.

“I thought so,” he said, voice serious. He started to slowly circle around them, eyes never breaking

contact with them. Like a predator. Zach and Zorian assumed fighting stances, but did not make any

aggressive moves. “I should have figured it out earlier. I really should have. The fact everyone got

cut off from the spirit planes all of a sudden should have been a massive warning as to what was

happening, but it sounded so incredulous that human beings could cause something so grand in

scope and effect. When I found that the aranea beneath Cyoria had suddenly dropped dead one

day, I was just happy an obstacle had disappeared and did not think about it as hard as I should. It

was only when I talked to you that things started to become clear… but I, in my arrogance, refused

to see the truth.”

“We have no idea what you’re talking about, bag of bones,” Zach growled at him.

“It all clicked when you just casually opened a dimensional gate to another continent,” Quatach-Ichl

continued, ignoring his claim. “There had been something about your attitude that had bothered me

right from the start, when I first talked to you in that tavern, but it is only now that it starts to make

sense. You showed up out of nowhere, loaded with money and skills that make no sense in light of

your past and age… like two adult mages badly pretending to be a couple of teenagers. You are fine

with giving up divine artifacts in exchange for information and throw huge amounts of money on

speculative research… as if material possessions don’t matter to you, only knowledge. You don’t like

me killing people, but you have no problems butchering Eldemar treasury guards to get what you

want… like those guards were never actually real to begin with.”

Quatach-Ichl stopped his circling. Silence descended on the whole scene for several seconds, with

nobody saying anything. Though everything was still and quiet, tension invisibly started to ratchet up.

“This whole thing… is some kind of giant illusion, isn’t it!?” Quatach-Ichl finally concluded. They said

nothing, and the lich took their silence as a confirmation of his idea. “I should have seen it sooner,

but I was too full of myself. How could I, mighty Quatach-Ichl, be snared into some kind of illusion

like that? I instinctively rejected the truth until it was staring at me right in the face. But now… now

I’m going to have some answers. Some real answers!”

He attacked, his organic guise melting away to reveal the black skeleton wreathed in green light that

lurked beneath the skin.

They were ready for him.

Quatach-Ichl immediately went for soul magic this time, not even bothering with disintegrators and

energy spells. Presumably because, while he wasn’t actually certain how this ‘illusion’ he was caught

in worked, he had already noticed Zach and Zorian did not seem to value physical things much and

thus suspected these weren’t their real bodies. If he wanted to defeat them, he needed to aim for

their souls.

Well… he was kind of right about that, but Zach and Zorian had come here prepared. Their souls

were fortified with defensive wards and they were not as defenseless and terrified in the face of soul

magic as they once were.

Pulses of ghostly light assaulted them, but they warded them off with some effort. They responded

with more mundane attack spells like incineration rays, ground liquefaction spells, destructive black

blades of spatial force and so on. Quatach-Ichl defended himself with haste, force fields and

animated sand creatures, but responded solely with soul magic attacks.

After a few exchanges, Zach and Zorian decided to reveal the next layer of their preparations – the

trap wards they had placed on the area beforehand. The truth was, Quatach-Ichl really was kind of

stupid for following them here through an unknown portal, because this was one of the several

places where Zach and Zorian had prepared a trap for him. Granted, they had thought they would

have to force him here through the gate, but this way worked too.

However, Quatach-Ichl had evidently prepared himself too. Before the wards could fully activate, the

ancient lich removed one of his ‘decorative’ bracelets and crushed it.

Four cubical constructs made out of black bones materialized around Quatach-Ichl, emerging from

some kind of hidden pocket dimension the lich kept around him. Each of them had four skulls

embedded into their sides, their eye sockets burning with a dim green flame. Through his soul

perception, Zorian could detect that each skull held a trapped soul inside of it. Powerful ones too –

they had probably been harvested from talented and experienced mages, not some random

bystander.

The skull cubes pulsed, seemingly synchronizing with each other, and started unfolding into their

own warding scheme, beginning to overpower the ones Zorian and Silverlake prepared in this place.

Well. Time to go all-out, then. Zorian deployed the palace orb and summoned Alanic, Silverlake and

Xvim, who had been patiently waiting there for just this moment.

The fight quickly heated up, spells flying left and right. Quatach-Ichl was forced to give up on using

exclusively soul magic to attack them. Soul magic had never been especially suitable for actual

fights, which was why Quatach-Ichl didn’t usually use soul magic as his first resort. Now, faced with

five dangerous enemies, he could no longer afford to use such suboptimal tactics.

Zorian expected Quatach-Ichl to retreat at this point. He could no doubt tell he had no chance of

winning this fight, and those skull cubes floating in the sky were effectively negating the trap wards

that Zorian and Silverlake placed on the area to keep him from simply teleporting or flying away.

But Quatach-Ichl didn’t do that. He kept fighting like a man possessed, throwing vast amounts of

mana into every single spell. Finally, after a particularly well-executed haste spell, Quatach-Ichl

managed to produce a wind gust spell sufficiently powerful to lift them off their feet and scatter them.

Normally they would have glued their feet to the ground to prevent that, but the sand of the Xlotic

desert simply wasn’t hard enough to let them do that – something they hadn’t realized until it was too

late.

Quatach-Ichl immediately followed it up with a huge pulse of soul magic that aimed to stop everyone

in the vicinity. Zorian fortified his soul immediately before it hit… and then realized it was just a

distraction.

Before anyone could recover from the wind blast, Quatach-Ichl hasted himself again and thrust his

hand towards Xvim, hitting him with two spells in quick succession. The first was a powerful dispel

which stripped the man of all his personal defense spells… including his mind blank. The second

was some kind of mind magic spell.

Shit…

Zorian didn’t hesitate. He immediately used his telepathy to plunge into Xvim’s currently unprotected

mind and started a mental tug of war with Quatach-Ichl, trying to eject the lich from his mentor’s

mind.

The spell Quatach-Ichl had cast was some kind of memory probe, he quickly realized. Powerful, but

very crude and destructive by Zorian’s standards. It probably hadn’t done any permanent damage to

Xvim yet, but it probably would if this continued for long. Thankfully, although Quatach-Ichl appeared

to be very good at mind magic, he was still using a structured spell and didn’t have that much

experience in actual telepathic combat. Soon, the lich decided to retreat from Xvim’s mind on his

own.

Alanic recovering and trying to melt him down with a massive fire spell probably had a lot to do with

that. Not even Zorian could trawl through someone’s memories and pay attention to a fight at the

same time.

In any case, Zorian suspected that Quatach-Ichl had gotten what he wanted out of Xvim’s mind in

the end. His body appearance was hard to read, but he looked like he was a little… rattled.

“Wait!” Quatach-Ichl said. “Stop!”

They didn’t stop, of course. Not until he suddenly took his crown off his head and threw it on the

ground in front of them. And then did the same with the imperial dagger they retrieved from the

Eldemar’s royal treasury.

Huh. Zach and Zorian signaled the others to stop fighting for a moment.

“Take them,” he said.

“You’re just going to give them to us?” Zach asked curiously.

“We both know they are meaningless to me,” Quatach-Ichl said curtly.

“How much did you glean from those memories you stole?” Zorian asked curiously.

He glanced towards Xvim, but his mentor gave no indication that the experience had shaken him up

to any significant extent.

“Enough to know how meaningless this all is. At least for people like me,” Quatach-Ichl said,

sounding a little defeated. He laughed hollowly. “Ha ha ha! You really got me good! I have to say, if

you just–”

It only took a moment for them to be caught off-guard. They had unconsciously relaxed a little after

Quatach-Ichl seemingly gave up and no longer made aggressive moves, and the lich immediately

took advantage of it. He once again put himself under the effect of haste and then rushed straight at

them, literally running up to them… and then he exploded.

Later, Zorian would wonder what exactly tipped him off and made him immediately activate his

marker’s restart switch when he realized Quatach-Ichl was rushing at them. Was it because he

unconsciously sensed something through his soul perception? Because of some unexplainable

hunch? All he knew was that, when Quatach-Ichl started detonating his own soul in that last suicide

attack, Zorian had already initiated the restart ending protocol.

They still ended up being caught by part of the blast before the restart ended. Zorian’s soul was

engulfed in a soul-corroding, excruciatingly painful blast of spiritual energies before everything went

dark.

His last thought was that he hadn’t even known a soul could be detonated like that…

Chapter 084

Powerless

Zorian slowly awoke in his bed in Cirin. His head was fuzzy, his body hurt all over and he had trouble

remembering what he had been doing in the previous restart. Confused and in pain, he remained

lying in bed for a time, fading in and out of consciousness.

Gradually, his mind began to clear up and he started to get concerned. Something was wrong. Yeah,

he was feeling absolutely terrible, but it was more than that. Something was subtly off about this

situation, and it was really starting to bother him.

‘Oh, right,’ it suddenly dawned on him. ‘Kirielle didn’t wake me up by jumping on me. I woke up on

my own with no one else in sight. That shouldn’t be possible unless something has gone very, very

wrong…’

The moment he realized this, it was as if something clicked inside his mind and it all came back to

him. The sudden visit of Quatach-Ichl, the theft of the dagger from the royal vaults with his help, the

final battle they had against the ancient lich and the insidious soul attack he used just before the

restart ended… the memories flooded into his mind suddenly and without end. The process was

forceful and alien, as if something was shoving these thoughts directly into his brain with little regard

to his wellbeing. The waves of pain and nausea radiating from his damaged soul suddenly

intensified, and he barely managed to roll himself out of bed before vomiting his guts out all over the

floor of his room.

Dimly, he was aware that Kirielle rushed inside when he started making noise and then rushed back

out screaming for mother to come and help, but he was in no position to react to that. It took all of his

strength just to remain conscious and weather the pain. His soul felt like it was going to split apart,

and he instinctively knew that it would be a terrible mistake for him to black out at the moment. He

and Zach had long theorized that their soul synchronized somehow with their body at the start of

every restart, interfacing with their life force and rearranging their brains to account for the memories

they gathered over the restarts, and it looked as if this was true… except that in its current state, it

was no longer capable of smoothly completing that process. Without Zorian’s conscious efforts to

stabilize his soul, it would not only ravage his body and mind but possibly also injure itself further in

its fumbling.

If he lost consciousness now, who knew when he was going to wake up next? A small, panicked part

of his mind feared he had already spent the majority of their remaining restarts in a soul damage

induced coma, but he shoved that thought aside for now. This wasn’t the time to worry about that.

For now, all he could do was grit his teeth and deal with the problem at hand.

He didn’t know how much time he spent in that state, shivering on the floor of his room as he fought

to stay awake, but eventually Mother and Kirielle rolled him over onto a blanket and carried him off to

a guest room to recover in. Somehow, he managed to persist through it all until his soul finally

calmed down. When he finally recovered enough to talk, he found out that it was still the first day of

the restart. He had failed to react when Kirielle came to wake him up, and stayed that way for about

two hours before waking up. Mother and Kirielle seemed shaken at the severity of his apparent

illness, and refused to let him get up and walk around on his own in the aftermath. They also called

for a local healer to come and check up on him, which was very annoying yet perfectly reasonable in

light of what happened, so he could hardly object to it.

Predictably, the healer failed to find anything really wrong with him. He was not a mage, just a local

who knew how to recognize common illnesses and hand out appropriate potions in response. He

failed to find anything seriously wrong with Zorian, so he simply suggested that they watch him

closely for a few days to make sure it didn’t happen again. Mother was rather unhappy with his

‘uselessness’, but she did seem more at ease after receiving the diagnosis.

When they finally left him alone for a while, he decided to chance things and reached into his

marker, even though he knew the action would aggravate his soul damage somewhat. He had to

know how many restarts they still had left.

The marker told him he still had 25 iterations left, which caused Zorian to breathe a sigh of relief. He

didn’t lose any of the restarts, it seemed.

Unfortunately, this was where the good news ended. The damage Quatach-Ichl’s last attack did to

his soul meant that he was currently completely incapable of casting anything – attempting to

perform even the simplest of shaping exercises caused his soul to radiate waves of pain and nausea

throughout his whole body in protest. Though this would go away in time, he estimated it would take

at least three months before he was back in his top form. Perhaps as much as four or five months if

circumstances forced him to push things and he kept aggravating his injuries.

Zorian suddenly realized that he relied on his magic for practically everything these days. He had

already forgotten what it was like to be a weak, mundane teenager. Even coming up with a plan for

going forward that didn’t involve the use of a teleport spell was hard…

Damn it. He doubted Zach was any better off than he was, considering he had yet to visit Zorian

after so many hours into the restart, so this was pretty much a total disaster. Even though they

hadn’t spent any of the restarts in a coma, the inability to use magic was going to sharply limit their

options in the upcoming restarts. There was no way they would dare approach Silverlake or

Quatach-Ichl with an obviously damaged soul like this, for instance. Additionally, the ancient lich may

be able to recognize the soul damage as having been done by himself in some fashion – Zorian had

no idea how one would go about doing that, as he found no traces of foreign soul fragments in his

soul, but he wasn’t a millennia-old lich like Quatach-Ichl.

He sighed. He had really underestimated the ancient lich. He probably should have been raging

internally at the amount of grief he caused them, but in all honesty? Zorian found himself kind of

impressed by the decisiveness and ruthlessness Quatach-Ichl had displayed. It took mere moments

for Quatach-Ichl to decide, after seeing Xvim’s memories, that the time loop was real and that he

should sacrifice everything to hit them where it hurt the most. Most people would be doubtful at the

information they received or too shocked to think clearly, but Quatach-Ichl didn’t hesitate at all to

sacrifice his own soul in an attempt to take them down.

Zorian could see the logic. Without Zach and Zorian mucking things up, Quatach-Ichl was pretty

much guaranteed to get what he wanted out of the invasion of Cyoria, and potentially cooperating

with them had little appeal to him. Possibility of betrayal aside, he was a thousand-year-old lich –

what use did he have for a measly decade or two? Still, knowing all of this intellectually, and being

able to disregard self-preservation in order to pull off a suicide move… those were two entirely

different things. Zorian had no idea that a person could detonate the outer layer of one’s soul in

order to launch a massive suicide attack on the souls of everyone in the vicinity, but even if he did,

he would not have expected Quatach-Ichl to use such a maneuver after less than a minute of

consideration. Zorian knew that he would be unable to act so boldly if he had found himself in

Quatach-Ichl’s shoes, and it boggled his mind that a lich – people that are typically obsessed with

personal survival at all costs – was able to steel himself into pulling off a suicide move so easily.

Well. Putting that aside, he suddenly realized he had a tricky problem on his hands. Namely, he had

to find a way to convince Mother to let him go to Cyoria so he could check up on Zach. From what

he remembered, the last time he failed to wake up in time it was due to the Sword Diver attack in

one of the restarts, and he had to remain in Cirin for the rest of the month to make Mother calm

down and let him out of her sight. This time the situation looked much worse, and he needed to

convince her to trust him far more than she had been willing to the last time around.

He could already feel his headache getting worse.

- break -

It took two whole days of constant nagging and arguments before Zorian was able to convince

Mother to let him go. He thought about just boarding a train when she wasn’t looking, but the look in

her eyes made him suspect she would drop everything and follow after him if he tried that. She could

be remarkably stubborn that way. Strangely, it was Father who ended up helping him by arguing in

his favor. He actually seemed impressed that Zorian was willing to push through his sickness and

keep attending classes, and ended up helping him convince Mother to let him go to Cyoria. It was a

very surreal experience to Zorian, since he couldn’t remember the last time his father took his side or

approved of his choices. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

In any case, Mother eventually relented on the whole issue, though she did insist he take Kirielle

with him. So she could ‘keep an eye on him’, supposedly. It was amusing to see her pause in

surprise when he immediately agreed to her request.

The journey was a bit of an unpleasant shock to him. Robbed of his magic and still plagued with

phantom pains and tremors, he struggled to carry their luggage and they both ended up getting

caught in the rain for a while before they sought shelter in a nearby inn. He ended up renting a tiny,

overpriced room for a single night, since the rain wouldn’t be stopping any time soon.

Kirielle wouldn’t stop complaining about getting wet for nearly an hour and screamed like a baby

when she saw a particularly large cockroach crawling along the wall of their room.

Being unable to access his vast magic abilities was an unusual and very unpleasant experience.

The next day, he brought Kirielle to Imaya’s place. Thankfully, she did not make too much of an

issue out of their arrival, even though Zorian had not arranged for anything with Ilsa in this particular

restart.

Then he went searching for Zach.

He quickly realized this wouldn’t be as easy as he imagined. Zach was, he soon found out, officially

missing. Tesen Zveri, Zach’s legal guardian, was organizing a search for him and called for anyone

who had any information about his whereabouts to contact him immediately.

That was… very familiar. Almost nostalgic, really. It was pretty much the same situation that he had

faced during the first few restarts after he got pulled into the time loop.

He wondered what that meant. Was this some kind of additional time loop safeguard that kept the

controller gone until they recovered, or was this just Zach’s guardian freaking out about finding a

comatose Zach and faking a disappearance? Personally, Zorian would bet on the latter. Quite a few

people apparently knew how inappropriate Tesen’s handling of Noveda’s affairs was, so if Zach

were to fall mysteriously unconscious all of a sudden, he would be one of the prime suspects. Zorian

could totally see Tesen fearing that the coma would be blamed on him and faking a disappearance

until he can decide what to do, much like Jornak did with Veyers.

In any case, it was relatively easy to prove which one of the options was correct. Zach and Zorian

both had a marker with an identical key, and Zorian knew a tracking ritual that would let him locate

his fellow time traveler with ease.

All he had to do now was find someone to help him cast it. Because he was currently incapable of

doing it himself.

Gods, he hated this restart so much…

- break -

The room was silent. Zorian was supremely calm and collected, staring Xvim right in the eyes

despite the look of annoyance present on his mentor’s face.

“So let me see if I got you correctly,” Xvim said. “You are a time traveler, you fought a millennia-old

lich with Zach in the previous version of this month that I can’t remember, your soul has been

damaged so you conveniently can’t demonstrate any of this amazing magic you apparently know

and now you want me to help you rescue Zach from the evil clutches of Tesen – his legal guardian

who is secretly behind his recent disappearance, despite organizing a nation-wide search for the

kid.”

Zorian considered it for a second.

“Yes, that’s pretty much what I’m saying,” he nodded.

“Get out of my office.”

- break -

Ilsa carefully studied the stack of papers in front of her, one hand propping up her chin while using

the other to slowly tap her finger against the desk in a steady rhythm.

Zorian patiently waited for her to finish reading. If this didn’t work, he would have to take a risk and

seek magical assistance through black market channels. Dealing with criminals while being

essentially powerless was taking quite a bit of a risk, but there was nothing he could do. He needed

to know what was going on with Zach.

“So all I need to do is cast this spell on you and tell you what the results say?” Ilsa eventually asked,

giving him a suspicious look.

“That’s right,” Zorian nodded.

“It looks like a tracking spell,” she noted.

“It is a tracking spell,” Zorian confirmed.

Ilsa raised an eyebrow at him.

“Dare I ask what it’s supposed to track, then?” she asked.

“It’s kind of personal,” Zorian said, doing his best to look depressed and desperate. “I’m afraid my

friend has gone missing. Please, Miss Zileti. You know I’m not a troublemaker student and I don’t

ask for much. It… it would mean a world to me if you did this for me!”

Ilsa snorted derisively at him.

“Hmph! You need to work on your acting skills, Mister Kazinski,” she told him. “That aside… I had

professor Chao tell me about a strange little visit from you recently.”

Ugh. He was still kind of annoyed that Xvim was so unwilling to entertain his claims. Being

implausibly good at magic was apparently really important for convincing the man there was

something to his crazy time travelling claims. Well, convincing him quickly, in any case. He could

probably wear down the man’s skepticism with a lot of time and effort, but he didn’t want to wait that

long to tackle this problem.

“Is this friend of yours Zach Noveda, perhaps?” Ilsa tried after he didn’t say anything for a while.

“He could be,” Zorian shrugged.

“Zorian…” Ilsa sighed, folding her fingers into a triangle in front of her. “Putting aside that I have

never really heard of you interacting much with mister Noveda in the past… what if you’re right?

What if Zach has really been kidnapped by his caretaker and taken somewhere? I cast the tracking

spell and give you the location. What do you do with it? How can an academy student like you

handle the guards and the security measures that this place would undoubtedly have and rescue

Zach?”

Zorian internally debated the merits of explaining to her that his plan was to simply hire black market

mercenaries to do the parts he himself could not, but eventually decided it was a bad idea. He had

no real excuses in regards to where he got all the money needed to hire such people or why he

thought he could judge their skills and character well enough to identify which of them are worth

hiring and which aren’t.

“You don’t have to worry about it,” he told her, giving her a reassuring smile. “I’m just trying to find a

friend. I’m sure it won’t be all that difficult.”

She gave him an unamused look. Yeah, he probably should have just gone to the black market right

from the start instead of bothering with this…

Contrary to his expectations, though, she didn’t just throw him out of her office immediately after.

“Give me two days, okay?” she eventually told him. “I need to speak with the academy leadership

about this.”

“Huh?” Zorian said, surprised. “I’m not sure I understand. Why would you need to kick this up so

high? It’s just a tracking spell…”

“And let you get in over your head and disappear as well? I don’t think so,” Ilsa said. “If we’re going

to do this, we may as well go all the way. Besides… mister Noveda is a student of our institution. It is

well within our rights to try and locate him if he goes missing.”

She pushed the stack of papers towards him and tapped it a couple of times for emphasis.

“Now…” she said, “explain to me how exactly this tracking spell works and why you think it can find

mister Noveda when so many professional diviners have tried and failed to do the same.”

- break -

It was fascinating to watch how quickly and effectively the academy could mobilize itself when it

really cared about something. Perhaps it was because the House Noveda had some secret ally

among the academy leadership or because the academy saw the whole situation as a chance to

score some free reputation points, but they really did assemble a team to go check up on the

location Zorian would provide them with.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little intimidated by the attention suddenly directed at him. For

one thing, he wasn’t actually completely certain the tracking spell would work. While he personally

didn’t think it very likely, it was still possible that Zach’s disappearance was really just some sort of

time loop safeguard and that he was literally nowhere to be found. It would be quite awkward if that

happened.

Thankfully, the tracking spell worked just fine. Zach was just outside of Cyoria, in one of the smaller

private estates that technically wasn’t owned by Tesen but could be connected to his family if one

looked deeper. The group assembled by the academy immediately stormed the place, presenting

official-looking authorization documents when questioned about their motives and identity. There

were guards in place, but they were apparently not paid enough to face off against a numerically

superior force from a well-known institution and they quickly decided to stand down and give them

free rein. The secret basement Zach was being held in was cunningly hidden, but since Zorian was

there to serve as a living tracking device, it was simple enough to find it anyway.

Zach was in a soul-damage induced coma, just like Zorian expected him to be. Due to his inability to

cast anything, including soul diagnosis spells, he couldn’t be sure why Zach had ended up in a

worse state than he did, but he had his suspicions. Zach’s control over his own soul was much

weaker and cruder than Zorian’s, as was his ability to retain mental discipline. If he woke up early on

in the restart like Zorian did and had to fight to stay awake and prevent his soul from going berserk…

Well. Even Zorian found that struggle to be a challenging one.

In any case, Zorian was now presented with a new problem. Even though he had been crucial in

tracking down Zach, he now couldn’t access his unconscious body at all! The discovery of his

unconscious body had kicked up a media storm that didn’t look like it was going to die down any

time soon and he had been transferred to an expensive hospital and placed under guard. Zorian was

not a family member, nor did he have any other known links to the Noveda heir, and many people

were suddenly questioning his involvement in all this. The academy was taking his side for now, but

Ilsa told him things were a bit delicate at the moment. Tesen was trying to distance himself from the

matter, bitterly denying he had anything to do with Zach’s coma or imprisonment outside of Cyoria,

and his faction pushing hard for Zorian to be arrested so he could be ‘vigorously questioned’.

No matter. Even if Zorian could see Zach, what would he do with his unconscious body? Before he

visited Zach in the hospital, he had to figure out how to accelerate his healing. Who knew how long it

would take for Zach to wake up if he had to rely on his natural rate of recovery? Fortunately, this was

something he could actually tackle with his current abilities.

Sudomir, just like many necromancers, often ended up damaging his soul in various ways while

training and practicing his craft. As such, he had invested a lot of time in tracking down methods of

accelerating his recovery, and Zorian had made sure to steal most of these out of his head during

their interrogation sessions. A lot of these were purely personal soul magic exercises that were

useful only to the soul mage using them, or complex ritual spells that he wasn’t capable of casting

right now, but a few actually came in the form of potions that could be administered to others.

And alchemy did not require any mana shaping. His inability to do magic did not hold him back here

in the slightest. So long as he could track down and buy the appropriate materials, he would be able

to create the potions in question.

Getting materials for such a relatively exotic potion was anything but easy, of course. Many of them

were not sold on the open market, and even if they were Zorian did not have enough money on him

to buy them. He thought about robbing invader caches again, but his lack of magic made that a far

riskier proposition than it usually was. Additionally, he had attracted quite a bit of attention to himself

lately, so going out for a little midnight stealing was probably unwise. Thus, he ended up amassing

the necessary funds the hard way – he bought a bunch of raw materials with his available money,

made a handful of rare, hard-to-make potions with them, sold them for money, used that money to

buy even more raw materials, and so on. It took him a week of that to get enough money to buy what

he actually wanted, and then another four days before he had managed to track it all down and

finished the potions.

The end result was three different bottles, one holding a milky white liquid, another a blood red syrup

that looked as if it was constantly boiling and the last one a glossy, pitch black pill that floated in the

center of the bottle as if weightless.

He took all three of them and departed in the direction of the hospital that held Zach. He was still not

allowed to visit him, but who cared about that? Through a strategic use of sleep bombs and other

disabling potions, he managed to gain access to Zach’s room, after which he proceeded to force-

feed the three soul cures to his unconscious body, one after another.

He immediately left afterwards. It would take a while for the potions to actually take effect, and it

would be best if he were far away from the scene of the crime when people found the trail of

unconscious bodies he had left in his wake.

- break -

The news of the second ‘attack’ on Zach while he was in the hospital kicked up another round of

controversy and several dramatic vows by the hospital staff and city authorities that the perpetrator

was going to be caught any day now. Considering that not even Zorian’s worst detractors seemed to

suspect him as the perpetrator made him rather doubtful of that claim, though. One amusing detail

was that the hospital claimed they had caught the attacker in the act and ‘heroically fought him off’,

which was why Zach supposedly hadn’t been hurt more as a result of the break-in.

While he waited to see what the result of his intervention would turn out to be, Zorian looked into

what had happened to Alanic, since the battle priest was one of the few competent and reliable soul

mages he knew of. Sadly, with Zorian being unable to teleport and busy with the whole Zach

situation, he never did intervene to save Alanic from Sudomir’s assassins, so by the time he checked

up on him the man was already dead. Frustrating. It did make him kind of curious how those

assassins were even capable of killing someone of Alanic’s caliber. Investigating the case a little

revealed he was essentially ambushed while sleeping, allowing his attackers to kill him before he

even realized what was going on. That… kind of made sense, yeah. If Zorian saved Lukav, Sudomir

panicked and acted prematurely, trying to kill Alanic through sheer force before Lukav could contact

him and tell him someone was killing people like them. If the assassination of Lukav went through

without issues, Sudomir would act with due caution and planning and kill Alanic in his sleep.

In any case, the treatment worked far better than he had hoped – four days after he fed Zach those

potions, his fellow time traveler woke up from the coma. Not long after that, he demanded to see

Zorian, which pretty much shut down any further attempts to keep Zorian from visiting the hospital.

“How are you feeling?” Zorian asked his fellow time traveler.

“Like crap,” Zach grumbled. He gave Zorian a suspicious look. “I heard you’re the one who tracked

me down after my asshole caretaker just stuffed my unconscious body down in some basement. I

guess I should thank you for that, but… how are you so much better off than me? Did you not get

caught in the blast or something?”

“You know our conversation is probably being eavesdropped, right?” Zorian asked him.

“So? Just put up a privacy ward on the room and be done with it,” Zach told him.

“I can’t,” Zorian sighed. “I can’t really cast anything right now.”

Zach was quiet for a few seconds.

“Ah,” he said finally. “I guess you didn’t get off as lightly as it appears. You probably don’t want to

hear this, but that kind of makes me glad. I kind of prefer it when you have to suffer through this crap

with me.”

“Jerk,” Zorian said, though there was no real heat in it.

“Yeah, yeah… but seriously, why are you already walking around while I can’t even stand up without

vomiting all over myself?”

“I’m not sure, but… do you perhaps remember waking up in your own room for a moment before

losing consciousness again?” Zorian asked him.

Zach frowned.

“It’s hard to remember,” he said after a few seconds. “Maybe?”

“Hm. Well, we’re going to have to continue this particular topic when you get out of the hospital,”

Zorian told him. “Can you estimate how long it will be before you’re back in top form?”

Zach frowned. “I don’t know. Four, five months? Something like that.”

Zorian breathed a sigh of relief. Although Zach’s condition was worse than his own, it would seem it

still wasn’t too bad…

“Is there something urgent you need right now?” Zorian asked him. “As you can imagine, my ability

to acquire things is a bit limited at the moment, but I’ll do my best.”

“All I want right now is to be out of this damn hospital,” Zach grumbled. “But I don’t think that’s going

to happen before the end of the month, considering what I’ve overheard, and neither of us has the

ability to force the issue right now.”

It was as Zach said. He spent the rest of the restart trapped in the hospital while Zorian had to dodge

increasingly insistent questions about his involvement in the ‘Zach affair’ and his personal activities.

Thankfully, before those things could really get anywhere, the summer festival had arrived and the

restart came to an end.

- break -

The next five restarts were relatively relaxed. With their souls so heavily damaged and their

spellcasting impaired, Zach and Zorian couldn’t really do anything particularly dangerous or

strenuous, lest their recovery be prolonged even further or their soul damage become permanent.

Whether it was Zach or Zorian, they had no choice but to patiently wait for their souls to heal, so they

gave up on doing anything serious and decided to just have fun and work on some of their easier

skills. A part of Zorian was aghast at taking a break with their time steadily running out as it was, but

forcing themselves would gain them little while risking a lot so he did his best to suppress it.

Unexpectedly, having his soul damaged actually ended up being quite a boon to Zorian’s skill with

soul perception and soul magic in general. It allowed him to map out his soul in far greater detail and

enhanced his understanding of how souls generally functioned. There were some things that were

very hard to notice when things were going smoothly, and some pieces of the soul were far easier to

comprehend when one compared intact and damaged versions of the soul to one another. He knew

from reading Sudomir’s mind that necromancers often deliberately mutilated other people’s souls for

that exact reason, destructively studying the anatomy of the soul to enhance their own skills, but one

could never really perceive foreign souls on the same level of detail as one could perceive their own.

As far as Zorian knew, no soul mage was crazy enough to deliberately damage their own soul as

heavily as Zach and Zorian had gotten theirs damaged just to enhance their knowledge of soul

mechanics, so their current opportunity was somewhat unique.

Although Zach started from a lower level, his skill in regards to personal soul perception also grew

by leaps and bounds in this period, since he invested a huge amount of effort into it – much more

than Zorian himself. The fact that he had ended up worse in the wake of Quatach-Ichl’s soul attack

seemed to have affected him greatly.

Aside from soul magic, the two of them also worked on their basic shaping skills and tinkered rather

heavily with alchemy, since this was the one magical discipline that hadn’t been affected by their

injuries in the slightest.

They didn’t try to inform anyone of the time loop during this time. Most of the notebooks and other

gathered information had been stored in the palace orb, which they couldn’t actually access at the

moment. They still interacted with many of the people they previously worked with, but mostly for the

sake of fun and hanging out this time.

They spent an entire restart diligently going to class, being as helpful as humanly possible to every

teacher and student they encountered. They spent a restart shapeshifting into various animals

through transformation potions and explored the city and its surroundings through alien senses and

perspectives. They dabbled in painting, sculpting, wood carving, drawing and various art skills. They

went on a tour of Eldemar and its neighbors via train and other mundane methods.

And when the last of these relaxing restarts was drawing to a close, Zorian realized he wasn’t sorry

for it at all. Even though they kind of wasted their time, even though they would only have 19

iterations left once this restart was finished… he was at peace with it all.

“We really need to give it our all in the upcoming restarts,” Zorian said to Zach one day. “19 restarts

aren’t that much and we never know when something like this can happen again. If we had gotten

this injured with only a handful of restarts left, that would have been the end of us right there. Do you

think we should still mess around with Quatach-Ichl after this?”

“Hell yes,” Zach said firmly. “I mean, yeah, he really got us good this time, but we still haven’t figured

out a good way to break into the royal vaults without his help. And besides… while he ended up

messing us up, he also showed us a really good way of taking him down with relative ease.”

“Oh?” Zorian asked curiously. “And what would that be?”

“See, I think we’ve been overthinking things a little,” Zach explained. “Instead of trying to lure

Quatach-Ichl into a trap and flooding him with golems and enemy mages, we should be relying on

our strengths to defeat him. Well, your strengths in this case. I’m talking about mind magic, of

course.”

“Mind magic?” Zorian said, stunned. “But with his mind blank on…”

“Xvim also had his mind blank on and it didn’t stop Quatach-Ichl,” Zach quickly pointed out. “It would

be tricky, but if we time things right and I get a moment to concentrate properly, I’m pretty sure I can

hit the guy with a powerful enough dispel to get rid of his mind blank. Just for a moment, but that

should be enough for you, right?”

“I’m quite sure that Quatach-Ichl has some measure of skill with defending his mind,” Zorian said

carefully. “The fact he was able to search Xvim’s mind so quickly in the heat of battle shows he’s

quite proficient in mind magic. Still… I don’t think he’s psychic and the brief telepathic clash I had

with him didn’t impress me much. I suppose it could work.”

“It will work,” Zach insisted. “Your mind magic is terrifying, and I bet it has been centuries since

Quatach-Ichl has been targeted by a mind mage he couldn’t kill in under a second. So long as we

can stop Quatach-Ichl from murdering you before you finish subverting his mind, I think this could

work amazingly well.”

“You say that like it’s such an easy thing,” Zorian sighed. “But you’re right, that is an interesting idea.

Certainly better than fumbling wildly for a solution like we have been doing thus far. I kind of suspect

Quatach-Ichl has rigged his soul to be withdrawn back into his phylactery if his mental defenses are

ever seriously breached, though. That’s what I’d do in his place.”

“That still means we get to pick up the imperial crown from his abandoned skeleton, though,” Zach

said with a shrug. “That’s the only thing we truly need from him. Everything else is just a bonus.”

Zorian supposed he was right about that.

- break -

The next restart they decided to spring back to work and get their plans back on track. Their souls

were fully healed as far as they could figure out and they didn’t have too much time to waste. Thus,

they quickly established a simulacrum link to Koth and Xlotic, recovered the palace orb, stole the

Pearl of Aranhal, and then boarded their brand new airship and set off towards Blantyrre.

It would be a long and dangerous journey. Blantyrre was the largest of the world’s continents, but it

was separated by miles and miles of open sea from the nearest human port. Just making sure they

stayed on the right path was a problem, since the endless expanse of water provided few clues as to

whether or not they were going the right way and neither Zach nor Zorian were proficient in this kind

of navigation. On top of that, the shortest path to the continent, which they pretty much had to take,

passed uncomfortably close to a large island inhabited by dragons, Hundreds upon hundreds of

dragons. It was called, somewhat unimaginatively but accurately, Dragon Island.

Dragons generally weren’t fond of humanity, and the dragons of the so-called Dragon Island were

especially belligerent. They not only killed any human that tried to disembark on the island itself, but

actively patrolled the waters around it for any passing ships. If they spotted any, they demanded

ruinous tributes in exchange for not destroying the vessel. Zach and Zorian had asked around to see

what the dragons found fitting to their tastes and were prepared to pay the tribute for their safe

passage, but the airship was very eye-catching and dragons were known to be capricious at the best

of times. It was best to prepare for a fight just in case, and a dragon was always a headache to fight.

On top of that, some of the sea monsters were known to be able to attack aerial vessels, firing jets of

water and energy attacks at things flying above them. It didn’t happen often, and the Pearl of

Aranhal usually flew quite high in the air, but it meant that Zach and Zorian could never fully relax

and had to be constantly on the lookout for potential problems.

Still, things were finally moving again and that was the important part. They would make the attempt

at the dagger and the crown again in this restart, and they would lay down the groundwork for finding

the location of the staff as well.

In the meantime, they were about to establish contact with Quatach-Ichl again. It was time to

arrange for a trade…

Chapter 085

Critical Mass

Zorian would be lying if he said that interacting with Quatach-Ichl again didn’t fill him with dread.

Aside from the fact that the ancient lich had reached an unfathomable level of expertise in soul

magic and could possibly detect residual damage on their souls, their current trade offer was

fundamentally different from what they did during their last interaction with him. Before, it was

Quatach-Ichl who approached them. Last time, he had blindsided them with his sudden visit. He had

the initiative right from the start, which doubtlessly helped lessen the level of threat he felt from them.

This time, it would be them who were going to blindside him… and Zorian was not at all sure the

ancient lich could take that gracefully.

Yet, Zorian knew he had to risk it. The fact was, their current initiatives were insufficient. Even if they

managed to gather all the keys together in one restart before the time ran out, that wouldn’t be

enough. Not for Zorian, anyway. The problem of how he was supposed to exit the time loop still

remained. His original self was still out there in the real world, so he couldn’t just order the Guardian

of the Threshold to shove his soul into his real body and be done with it. The Guardian of the

Threshold may be confused about his controller status, but it would surely notice there was already a

soul in Zorian’s original body upon trying that. And even if that could be sidestepped somehow, there

was still the matter of how to seize control of the body from his original self.

Zorian had a couple of ideas on how he could leave the time loop despite this issue, but all of them

required incredibly advanced knowledge of dimensionalism and soul magic to accomplish. Quatach-

Ichl had both, and it was likely that the insights he had into those two fields were impossible to find

elsewhere. Zorian couldn’t afford to ignore this priceless source of information, no matter how

dangerous it was.

Arranging a meeting with the ancient lich proved to be rather simple, at least. All they had to do was

go to the same corner store that Quatach-Ichl had sent them to the last time they had interacted with

him and ask about him. The man behind the counter acted as if they were crazy, but not long after

they left, the cephalic rats suddenly became a lot more interested in them and started following them

around. Zorian simply kept stealing away the individual rats from the collective for a few days before

Quatach-Ichl decided to contact them personally and arranged for a meeting.

At the moment, Zach, Zorian and Quatach-Ichl were sitting in a private booth of a relatively ‘high

class’ restaurant near the city center. Not exactly the type of institution Zorian liked to frequent, in

part because just getting a seat in one of those was pretty hard for an unknown teenager like him,

but Quatach-Ichl had been the one to pick the location and he was evidently in the mood to show off

his wealth and influence. He was using the same face and flesh-and-blood look he did the last time

they met in a public location – either this appearance was his usual persona for dealing with people

or this was how he once looked before discarding his flesh for an undead existence.

“What an interesting offer,” Quatach-Ichl said, playing around with his fork thoughtfully, occasionally

tapping it against his glass. He had ordered an expensive meal and wine for the occasion, but did

not touch any of it throughout the entire meeting. “I’m no stranger to people seeking me out for my

wealth of magical secrets, but usually their offers are… hesitant. They’re leery of angering a

powerful lich, they aren’t sure if I am really as good as they heard and they’re trying to pay as little as

possible to get what they want. They start small, asking for relatively minor things in order to puzzle

out how I think and what it would take to get what they really want…”

The ancient lich then made a dramatic pause, pointing at the small pile of divine artifacts and rare

materials that Zach and Zorian brought to him as payment for his ‘wealth of magical secrets’, as he

put it.

“You though?” Quatach-Ichl continued. “You’re immediately going for the kill. You want nothing less

than my complete pocket dimension creation expertise – an extremely rare, almost priceless set of

secrets – and you’re willing to offer no less than five divine artifacts and a plethora of extremely rare

materials in return. I’m impressed by your boldness, but I can’t help but wonder… are you not

worried I will cheat you or that this will end up a disappointing trade in the end? You are, after all,

trading physical goods for information of uncertain value. I could easily just ignore you after

pocketing the goods or play dumb and give you mere shadow of what you asked for.”

Zorian mentally agreed with this, but wasn’t really worried. Although many things about the ancient

lich were enigmatic, he was pretty sure he had a good read on his sense of honor. Quatach-Ichl

prided himself on his sense of fairness. He would not cheat them unless he thought they were trying

to cheat him first. The real challenge was to make him agree to the deal in the first place.

“Although I don’t dare claim I know you, you are as famed for your honorable behavior as you are for

your great magical skill and brutality in warfare,” Zorian said. Quatach-Ichl smiled idly, clearly

viewing all three traits as a compliment. “We feel that if we can reach an agreement with you, you

will do your best to honor it.”

“Perhaps my knowledge of pocket dimensions isn’t as extensive as you think it is, though,” Quatach-

Ichl pointed out. “I am indeed a man of many talents, but that is quite a rare and exotic field of study.

You may end up disappointed by the results of the trade.”

“If so, we will accept it quietly and in good grace,” Zorian shrugged. “We’re willing to take a gamble.”

“Hm. Although it is not a smart thing to admit such a thing in these kinds of negotiations, I feel you

are being a little too reckless here,” Quatach-Ichl noted thoughtfully, giving them both a piercing

look, as if trying to see through their souls. “It would have been smarter to try and do a smaller trade

at first just to see if my pocket dimension skills are worth the more substantial investment.”

“Well…” said Zach with a cheeky smile. “Although this is generally not a smart thing to admit in these

kinds of negotiations, the fact is we’re in a bit of a hurry. Slowly feeling you out and haggling over the

details would take too long. That’s why the terms we offered you were so generous, see?”

“Generous? Debatable,” Quatach-Ichl scoffed. “I was merely questioning your logic just now. I said

nothing about how good the deal appears to me. What you are seeking is pretty damn valuable.”

“Yes, but so is our payment,” Zach immediately shot back. “We realize that reaching out to you so

suddenly and asking for such a heavy favor is a bit unreasonable. We also realize that, being in a bit

of a hurry, we are innately in a disadvantaged position compared to you. We’re on a time limit, you

aren’t. That’s why we’re willing to offer as much as we did, though – in normal circumstances, we

would never consider this a reasonable trade.”

Quatach-Ichl stared at them for a few seconds. Perhaps he was trying to put pressure on them

through silence to see how they would react?

“You’re pretty interesting people,” Quatach-Ichl said. “I think that’s why I haven’t simply told you to

screw off by now. That’s what I’d normally tell people if they tried to give me this kind of deal. Are

you really teenagers? You are way too calm for people that are supposed to be, what, 15 years old?”

“Why bother even asking?” Zach challenged. “We already know you’ve tried to spy on us before

inviting us here, so you probably know enough about us to answer this yourself.”

“I do know some basic facts about you two,” Quatach-Ichl admitted. “It’s just that they don’t make

much sense. How the hell did two academy students gather all this and find out how to contact me?

Who are you really?”

“It’s a secret,” Zorian said blandly. There was no point in trying to explain. “But since we’re asking

private questions about one another, let me ask you a question of my own. How exactly did you talk

no less than four cephalic rat swarms into working under you? What the hell did you offer them to

make them open to cooperation? I can’t even get them to talk to me, much less work for me.”

“Heh. Are we including that information as part of our deal?” Quatach-Ichl asked with a grin.

“No,” Zorian snorted derisively. “I was just curious.”

“And also changing the subject,” Quatach-Ichl noted. “But fine, I get it. If you want to keep your true

identity secret, I won’t pry. But you know, if you really are as young as you appear, then we have

another problem on our hands. Namely, I’m not sure if you’re even capable of learning how to

perform dimensional magic on the level you are asking about. What makes you think you are

qualified to learn from me?”

“That is not an issue,” Zorian insisted. “We know we can perform this level of magic because we

are already capable of creating pocket dimensions.”

“Oh?” Quatach-Ichl said, a little incredulously.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. They would have to be careful not to make themselves look too amazing, or

else Quatach-Ichl might notice something was wrong and attack them again. But this particular bit of

information was impossible to hide, considering what they were asking of him. “We are asking you

for advanced guidance, not asking you to teach us the basics of the field.”

Zorian then removed a bracelet from his wrist and handed it to the ancient lich, who gracelessly

snatched it out of his outstretched hand and began to scrutinize it.

The bracelet was something Zorian had personally created before coming here. It served as an

anchor for a miniature pocket dimension. The internal space was tiny, barely enough to store a book

or two, but that wasn’t important. The important thing was that it proved that not only were they

capable of creating pocket dimensions, they could create advanced ones.

Most products of pocket dimension magic came in the form of boxes, chests and other rigid

containers that had their internal volume expanded beyond what their outside form would suggest.

These kinds of objects were relatively easy to make, as anchoring a pocket dimension to an internal

space of a hollow, inflexible object was a relatively simple task. Well, as much as any pocket

dimension creation could ever be easy, anyway.

A more advanced procedure was to use dimensional magic to expand the interior of more flexible

containers like bags, backpacks and pockets. Although this sounded rather convenient, fabric was

relatively fragile and hard to imbue with spell formula. After a few years of use at most, such objects

inevitably fell apart, sometimes causing catastrophic failures when least expected.

Finally, there were objects like the palace orb and the bracelet that Quatach-Ichl was currently

holding. These objects were not containers with expanded interior at all. They were self-contained

pocket worlds anchored to an object. Accessing the contents of such a self-contained space was

tricky without dimensional magic, which drastically reduced the amount of people that could use

them, but they were incredibly stable. They could be inflated to downright ridiculous sizes, if one had

a sufficiently stable anchor object… as the palace orb amply proved. The bracelet Zorian cobbled up

in the last few days was pretty underwhelming in that regard, but he was sure that Quatach-Ichl

would recognize what it signified nevertheless.

After a minute or so of silent study, Quatach-Ichl handed the bracelet back to Zorian and then

unceremoniously drew all the divine artifacts and exotic materials towards him with a sweep of his

hand. After a few quick movements, they all disappeared into his pockets.

Neither Zach nor Zorian moved to stop him.

“Alright,” Quatach-Ichl said with a small nod. “You win. I accept the deal. Since you have said you

were in a hurry and I’m going to be busy with something soon, we can start tomorrow.”

Busy with something… what a funny way to hide the fact he was planning an invasion of the city and

the release of the primordial trapped in the Hole. Still, Zach and Zorian were pretending not to know

about that in this restart, so they said nothing about that. After arranging for their next meeting place

and hammering out some minor details, they turned to leave only for the lich to stop them.

“One more thing,” Quatach-Ichl said. “Who messed up your souls so badly?”

Zorian couldn’t help but jolt a little at the question.

“W-What?” he asked.

“Your souls are scarred,” Quatach-Ichl said matter-of-factly. “The damage is faint now, and will

probably go away completely in a few years, but less than a year ago you must have been in an

absolutely miserable condition. A normal person would take years recovering from something like

that. Much of it would be spent comatose, too. I guess I should add soul magic to the list of things

you are inexplicably proficient in?”

Damn it. So he could detect it… though it didn’t look like he recognized it as something inflicted by

him in particular.

“Does it matter?” Zach challenged.

“No, I guess not,” Quatach-Ichl said, frowning. “But it makes me even more certain you are not really

who you present yourself as. You are fortunate I have something else occupying my attention at the

moment, or else I would not be as willing to let this go so easily. Make no mistake, though – once

I’ve cleared up my schedule a little, I’ll come back to visit you so we can clear some things up…”

Zorian did not outwardly react to this proclamation, but inwardly he was breathing a sigh of relief. No

doubt Quatach-Ichl meant this as a veiled threat, but so long as nothing happened within the bounds

of the time loop, Zorian didn’t really care about that. Provided they didn’t mess up in some other way

as the restart developed, they should be fine.

Hopefully Silverlake would take his warnings not to investigate into Quatach-Ichl more seriously this

time around.

- break -

Whether because Quatach-Ichl didn’t know that they were aware of the invasion this time around, or

because he never discovered just how expansive their activities around the region really were, the

lich didn’t seem to view them as very threatening this time around. They were kind of baffling, yes,

but he had an invasion to organize and he had no idea he had a time limit when it came to figuring

them out.

In regards to his obligations, he fulfilled them to the letter. The agreement called for him to provide

them with instructions for two hours every day, and he was never late for the arranged time, nor did

he stay so much as one minute longer than they agreed. If he withheld some of his expertise, it was

in a way that neither Zach nor Zorian could tell the difference – the amount of information he had for

them was enough to keep them busy for quite a while. He spoke clearly and understandably. He

readily clarified his statements if he saw they did not understand him. He pointed out any obvious

mistakes they did under his supervision and explained the logic behind his instructions rather than

let them ‘figure things out for themselves’. He never lost patience with them or insulted them. He

was, strangely enough, probably the best teacher Zorian had ever encountered.

Realizing that a soul-defiling, warmongering, thousand-year-old lich was his ideal academic

instructor was a somewhat unnerving realization for Zorian.

That aside, having Quatach-Ichl’s dedicated help in understanding pocket dimension magic made

Zorian suddenly aware that it wasn’t just the lack of qualified teachers and instruction manuals that

was holding him and Zach back from advancing quickly in the field. Embarrassingly enough, it often

happened that Quatach-Ichl was pushing ahead in his lessons and the two of them struggled to

follow along. To put it bluntly, the real bottleneck to making the most out of those lessons was their

own lack of talent and comprehension, not Quatach-Ichl’s unwillingness to instruct them to the best

of his ability. Zorian had a feeling the ancient lich was laughing at them on the inside about that.

Zorian knew this kind of result was to be expected.

It wasn’t that Zach and Zorian were stupid, or that their work ethic was lacking… it was just that they

lacked any special advantage when it came to learning something like pocket dimension magic.

They had no special talent or bloodline related to the field and neither of them was the kind of genius

that could easily grasp the complexities of this relatively mind-bending, unintuitive field of study.

There was little that could be done to speed their learning process up, at least through traditional

methods of advancement.

So Zorian turned to non-traditional methods instead. For a while now he had been hesitating about

delving deeper into the field of mental enhancements he had been messing with, afraid that he

would permanently mess up his own mind in the process. Now he decided to risk it and ordered his

simulacrums to kick things up a few levels. Aware that time was steadily running out, they did not

complain much and simply jumped at the task with enthusiasm that honestly surprised him. He

supposed that since he himself had set aside his fears and resolved to tackle the issue, they

inherited his determination as well… unlike in the past, where he himself had viewed the endeavor

with apprehension, and thus his simulacrums had been similarly unenthused about risking

themselves.

For the moment, his idea was to try and create a sort of mental calculator and internal clock, since a

lot of the problems with pocket dimensions came from the inhuman timing and precision required to

pull off certain stages successfully. Normally this was achieved via a complex system of divination

magic, which added an extra layer of complexity to an already tricky task. If he could strip away the

divination scaffolding and just do all the number-crunching, measurements and timing decisions

purely in his head, the magic would get significantly easier.

Of course, it turned out to be not that easy. While Zorian knew that creating a mental calculator was

very much possible, since it was one of the more common modifications aranea tinkered with, it was

a tricky thing to pull off in practice. Several of his simulacrum had to be forcibly broken out of their

experiments after they fell into strange mental states, endlessly counting the number of pebbles

around them and such. Thankfully, none of them were so far gone that they had to be destroyed and

recreated, so they were able to learn from their mistakes instead of starting from scratch and trying

to guess where their predecessors made a mistake.

Additionally, he was also experimenting with hyper-focused mental states and with trying to replicate

the hydra’s unity of self with his simulacrums. He had a feeling that if he could synchronize himself

with a handful of his own simulacrums the way a hydra could synchronize its multiple minds into one

self, many complex pieces of magic would become relatively trivial to perform.

Of course, these kind of mental enhancement were only of possible benefit to Zorian, and did not

help Zach in any way. For this reason, and also because he wanted to hedge his bets, Zorian also

started to look more closely into blood magic and enhancement rituals. After all, some creatures

were innately good at dimensionalism in various forms. Phase spiders, for instance, were capable of

instinctively creating small pocket dimensions to hide themselves in. Blink toads could teleport short

distances, voidsoul deer could bend space around them to make spells and projectiles launched at

them miss and the silverstripe mole was rumored to be able to perceive dimensional cracks and

boundaries in some strange fashion. It might be worthwhile to try and steal those kinds of abilities for

a while, just to see if they could offer them with some kind of important insight or capability.

Of course, Zorian was currently not very well versed in either blood magic or regular enhancement

rituals, so he would first have to practice with something relatively simple and then slowly work his

way up to what he wanted…

Alternatively, he could just hire an alchemist to make him an enhancement potion with desired

ability, but such enhancement potions did not confer the sort of instinctive competence with the

gained ability that a properly executed enhancement ritual did.

In any case, both the mental enhancement route and the blood magic route were long-projects. It

would be at least a couple of restarts before he could make an effective use of them, maybe more.

Thus, Zorian ended up turning to something more immediate to get the most out of Quatach-Ichl’s

teachings – his spell formula expertise.

Zorian knew for a while now that most old, experienced diviners had specialized divination

compasses they used to perform their work. Zorian himself rarely bothered with them, preferring to

simply dump information straight into his mind and sort it out mentally, but he had tinkered with such

devices often enough in the past. Kirma’s divination flower thingy and the spell formula crafters she

referred him to were especially useful in this regard. Now he embarked on a project to create such a

divination compass, one specialized in figuring out divination related to dimensionalism and pocket

dimension creation.

In this, at least, he had plenty of success. Spell formula were one of the things he had focused on

pretty heavily throughout his entire time in the time loop, and he had reached an extremely high level

of skill when it came to them. Producing a working version of such a dimensionalism-specific

divination compass took only two days, after which he rapidly improved the design, producing newer

and more potent versions every couple of days. By the time the end of the restart was approaching,

these divination compasses had become so good that Quatach-Ichl took notice of it and

commissioned a couple of them for his own use. In exchange, he provided them with the names and

locations of two secretive mages that also knew a thing or two about pocket dimension magic –

information that was almost as priceless as Quatach-Ichl’s own lessons, as far as Zach and Zorian

were concerned.

Gradually, the end of the restart started to approach…

- break -

While trying to deepen their understanding of pocket dimension magic consumed most of their

energies in this particular restart, it was far from being the only thing they worked on. An equally

critical, though far more boring task was to make sure the Pearl of Aranhal reached Blantyrre safe

and intact. A mission that was thankfully far easier than they had ever hoped it would be. No sea

monsters bothered them, and while no less than three dragons spotted them as they flew near the

Dragon Island, they were surprisingly easy to keep at bay with flashy combat spells and a single

experimental, magic-enhanced cannon that Zorian had installed on the ship. Neither the spells nor

the cannon actually did any damage to the dragons in question, but they kept the beasts from simply

rushing at them and ripping the hull into shreds. Perhaps because they had never seen an airship

like theirs and did not know what combat abilities to expect from it, all three of the dragons limited

themselves to probing attacks and flying in circles around them for a few hours to see if their

response times and attentiveness would ever slip up.

It helped that each of the dragons attacked alone. Only after one of the dragons had given up on

bothering them would the next one try his luck. If all three of them had united against them, Pearl of

Aranhal would have been doomed without question. Thankfully for them, dragons were notoriously

solitary creatures that viewed their own kind largely as competition rather than kin. They lived and

hunted alone, only forming societies if pressured to do so by outside aggression. Zorian had heard

there had been a few ill-considered campaigns in the past that sought to systematically wipe out

dragons in a particular area, only for the dragons in question to temporarily amass themselves into

massive flocks that devastated everything around them for a while before eventually breaking up

again when they were certain the danger was gone. Aside from that, dragons were largely an

individual threat, and dragons of Dragon Island were no exception.

Unfortunately, while their journey had not been delayed by dragons and sea monsters, their own

lack of navigational skill had lengthened the journey somewhat. Additionally, while the people who

made Pearl of Aranhal were world-class experts, it was still a prototype that had never really been

tested or truly finished before being sent on such an ambitious journey… meaning that it had almost

broken down several times along the way, almost crashing them into the sea at one point and

forcing them to drastically slow down at several points along their chosen route.

But in the end they made it. Five days before the restart was about to end, the Pearl of Aranhal

finally spotted the shores of Blantyrre.

Five days was not enough to really do anything, though. If they had to go through this kind of

lengthy, annoying journey in every single restart, only to be left with measly five days per restart to

locate the imperial staff, they were guaranteed to fail. Thus, their first and very urgent priority was to

locate a Bakora Gate somewhere on the continent. Any Bakora Gate, really. That way they could

reach the continent in only a handful of days with the help of Silent Doorway Adepts in subsequent

restarts.

Sadly, this was not an easy task. Bakora Gates were scattered all over Blantyrre, but the continent

was vast and the Gates were small. Searching for them blindly would take forever, which meant they

had no choice but to seek the natives for help in finding them.

The trouble was, Blantyrre was not inhabited by humans. The steaming equatorial jungle that

covered Blantyrre was home to a multitude of sapient species, but the most advanced and powerful

force were the lizardmen. They lived in great stone cities along the coast and the rivers, and

although they were very awfully primitive by human standards, they were more or less the only ones

qualified to help Zach and Zorian locate a Bakora Gate somewhere around here. Not only were they

the only species on Blantyrre that kept any sort of written records, they also regularly traded with

humans from Xlotic and Altazia, which meant that some of them actually spoke a language that Zach

and Zorian could understand.

Unfortunately, while the lizardmen did occasionally trade with humans, getting the location of a

nearby Bakora Gate out of them was still a huge chore. For one thing, they existed as a collection of

small kingdoms and quarrelling city-states that rarely shared information with one another, so unless

a Bakora Gate was literally in their territory there was no chance they would know about such a

strange but ultimately useless artifact. For another, only the priesthood was literate and

knowledgeable of obscure places and artifacts like these, and they were not terribly fond of

outsiders. Finally, while the lizardmen did occasionally trade with humans, they did so with great

caution and only in a strictly regulated manner. If they wanted information, they couldn’t just walk

into a lizardman city and start asking questions – they had to go through official channels and make

a formal request.

Pressed for time as they were, Zach and Zorian resorted to shock and awe to get what they want.

Rather than carefully approaching the local rulers and making respectful diplomatic requests for

information about Bakora Gates, they brazenly flew Pearl of Aranhal straight above the nearest

lizardman city, teleported themselves into the city center and then started throwing around gold,

gems and some spices that they heard lizardmen liked at everyone in the vicinity until someone

came to talk to them, at which point they promised great rewards for any information about the

Bakora Gates. Then they moved on and repeated this process in every larger city they encountered

as they flew around the coast.

The reaction was everything they hoped it would be. The lizardmen may be primitive, but they had

their ways, and news of their airship and what they were seeking quickly spread to every lizardman

power in the vicinity. Soon, everyone knew that two immensely powerful human mages were flying

around in their fancy airship and promising fantastic rewards to anyone who could lead them to a

Bakora Gate. Admittedly, this did cause a lot of the lizardmen to come forward with fabricated tales

of nearby Bakora Gates, but those were easily seen through by Zorian. Lizardmen emotions were

not alien enough to give Zorian’s empathy too much trouble.

Eventually, three days later, they were summoned by one of the local kings from a river city-state

deeper in the continent’s interior. The emissary brought with him a very lifelike drawing of a Bakora

Gate as proof that they were telling the truth, which was good enough for Zach and Zorian to

immediately set out towards the place.

This was why, at the moment, the two of them were standing in a luxurious stone throne room of a

lizardman king, curiously observing their surroundings while they waited for the king to actually arrive

and talk to them. Lizardmen rulers seemed to be fond of mosaics made out of gems and colored

stones, and this one was not an exception – the walls were dominated by some kind of epic battle

scene between two lizardmen forces. One of the two sides, which Zorian presumed to represent the

forces of the city they were currently in, was clearly dominating their opponents, boldly advancing

forward, while the other was in the process of being pierced by spears, clubbed over the head by

heavy clubs or down on their knees and begging for mercy. An absolutely giant lizardman floated in

the sky above the scene, curiously observing the battle. Probably a representation of one of the

lizardman gods…

Zorian’s idle musings were interrupted by the loud entrance of the lizardman king. A procession of

musicians playing some kind of annoying flute-like instruments came first, playing ear-splitting

whistles while a bunch of lizardmen children ran around and threw petals on the ground in front of

the approaching king. The lizardman throne guards, which had been leaning on their spears and

chatting amongst themselves in their incomprehensible lizardman tongue, quickly assumed a proper

posture and pretended they had been alert and battle ready all this time. They also banged their

spears against the floor a few times and let loose a keening wail that was probably some kind of

salute.

As for Zach and Zorian, they just stared at the spectacle, not sure how to react. Perhaps because

they had arrived so unexpectedly or because those rulers had not been so wealthy and powerful as

this one, but this was not the way the other lizardmen kings had behaved in front of them.

“Uh, what’s the proper procedure for greeting a lizardman ruler again? Are we supposed to bow or

shake hands or something?” Zach whispered to him uncertainly.

“Why are you asking me?” Zorian protested. “You’re nobility, not me. You should be the one who

knows things like this.”

“Please,” Zach scoffed. “You’re the one who is constantly interacting with various talking monsters.

This is totally your area of expertise!”

Zorian turned his attention to the approaching king. He was surprisingly short compared to the

warriors scattered around his palace, though the massive gem-encrusted headdress and glittering

golden jewelry hanging off of him immediately marked him as the ruler regardless. In one of his

hands he carried a black staff with a large, glowing, amber stone affixed on top. Four particularly

massive lizardman warriors flanked him on both sides, which made for a somewhat amusing

contrast between them and their king. What was not so amusing was the look in their eyes and the

emotions they were radiating. Unlike the normal palace guards, these four took their jobs very

seriously and their yellow, slitted eyes followed them with a threatening intensity – if they made so

much as a threatening movement, they were ready to shove a spear through their throat without

warning.

Also accompanying the king was another lizardman with lots of jewelry and an elaborate headdress,

although one less impressive and of slightly different type and color scheme. Zorian suspected

that she (he was pretty sure it was a female lizardman) was the high priest of the city.

And though she wasn’t as overtly hostile as the king’s honor guard, she clearly did not like them. At

all.

Zorian inwardly sighed. Of course nothing could ever be easy…

- break -

Zach and Zorian had already managed to claim the imperial ring from the Ziggurat of the Sun in the

past. Since they now knew that it was held by the sulrothum high priest, getting it was slightly easier

than it had previously been, when they had yet to even locate where it was. However, easier didn’t

mean easy. The sulrothum high priest resided in the innermost, most heavily defended portion of the

ziggurat. Getting to him still required a large-scale assault on the sulrothum settlement, which was…

non-ideal.

Rather than organize another assault on the Ziggurat of the Sun in this restart, Zorian agreed to try

something different this time around. After establishing a base near the ziggurat using Bakora Gates,

they brought over a dozen or so aranean mercenaries and instructed them to spy on sulrothum

guards and patrols. Although sulrothum minds were as alien to the aranea as they were to Zorian,

the aranea were far more experienced with making sense of alien minds than he was. They did it all

their lives, after all.

At the same time they began ambushing and killing sulrothum hunting parties and patrol groups

leaving the ziggurat, in the hopes that doing this continually would eventually force the high priest to

confront them directly or at least motivate to sulrothum to try and negotiate with them. After all, the

colony would surely starve if they couldn’t send anyone outside without them disappearing, right?

Unfortunately, the sulrothum didn’t behave like they hoped they would. Rather than investigate the

problem, they simply barricaded themselves inside and no longer tried to leave the ziggurat. It was

baffling. Either the colony had sizeable stockpiles of preserved food and felt certain they could last

for a while under siege or there was a Dungeon entrance somewhere below the ziggurat and they

decided to brave the tunnels to feed themselves instead.

Either way, it was annoying. Thankfully, the aranea were somewhat successful in their information

gathering.

“So,” Zorian asked the aranea in front of him. “I don’t think the damn wasps are going to poke their

heads out of their turtle shells any time soon. Do you have something useful to report?”

“I think so, yeah,” Storm Dream, the aranea in question, answering him through a voice spell so

Zach could hear her too. “First of all, the ring you’re after? It’s not an accident that the high priest has

it on him. He knows what it does and is actively using it.”

Oh.

“Now that I think about it, that does make sense,” Zorian mused. “I could tell the last time we met

that he’s a soul mage. That was a bit unusual, since sulrothum aren’t exactly known for their magic

abilities, but I thought nothing of it at the time. Since he’s wearing a ring that grants soul sight,

though, I guess it’s to be expected he became interested in that type of magic. We’re fortunate he

didn’t populate the ziggurat with undead guards or something.”

“Probably wouldn’t happen, even if he knew how to do that,” Storm Dream said. “They’re very

religious and they seem to attach great importance to being cremated upon death. Some nonsense

about returning to the ‘sun mother’ and whatnot.”

“Well, they should be happy about all those patrols we fireballed to death recently, then,” Zach said

cheekily. “They got a proper burial as they died.”

“Yes. Well,” Storm Dream said after a second of awkward silence. “If you want to lure the high priest

out of the ziggurat, I have only two ideas. One is to wait for him to come outside on his own to

perform one of his periodic ‘land blessings’ and ‘reading of the signs’. The next such occasion

should be about two months from now and–”

“Too long,” Zach immediately said, shaking his head.

“I don’t understand why you’re in such a hurry about this… the ring has been in the high priest’s

hands for years now. It’s not going anywhere,” Storm Dream said, with no small amount of

exasperation. “But fine. The other option is to try and ally yourself with the nearby sulrothum tribe

that this particular bunch has a rivalry with. I’m not entirely sure, but I think he would come out of the

ziggurat and support his warriors if he thought it was a rival tribe attacking them instead of scary

human mages with their unfair, mysterious magic and thunder sticks.”

“Ah,” nodded Zorian. The thought of seeing if the tribe had any local enemies and allying with them

had honestly didn’t even occur to him. A silly mistake, in retrospect.

Zach and Zorian discussed the merits of the idea for a while, before Zorian noticed that Storm

Dream was shifting in place uncomfortably and looked like she wanted to say something more.

“What?” he asked her.

“It’s… probably just a stupid coincidence, but the sulrothum high priest has the same kind of knife

you do,” she said.

“My knife?” Zorian asked incredulously. Since when did he even carry a kni– “Oh! Oh. You mean

this?”

He tapped the knife hanging from his backpack. It was the divine artifact they had recovered from

the palace orb – the one they had no idea what it did. Zorian sometimes liked to inspect it, staring at

it while futilely hoping he would finally succeed in unlocking its mysteries.

“Yes, like that one,” Storm Dream said. “I know you humans churn out thousands of identical objects

as a matter of course, but I thought it was strange that a sulrothum high priest on another continent

carries the same kind of knife like you do. Especially since their one is of immense religious

importance to them and has an impressive magical ability.”

“Oh? Do tell,” Zach prompted. “What magical ability?”

“The high priest can use it to command a sand worm of immense size hidden beneath the sands of

this place,” Storm Dream said. “It could be just more superstitious nonsense, I guess, but I don’t

think so. Maybe the sulrothum are overstating the worm’s real size, but they seem pretty certain of

its ability to repel all intruders, so it should be pretty impressive. If your knife is the same, then…

maybe you can control it too?”

Zach and Zorian were silent for a moment.

“I knew it was stupid,” Storm Dream said. “Just… forget I said anything.”

Zorian thought about the gigantic flying sand worm they had faced in their last assault on this place.

The creature was an immense threat, only kept manageable by Zach’s incredible combat prowess

and their extensive preparations before the battle. And the way its mind had completely stopped

Zorian’s mental abilities like a brick wall, unlike any other mental defense he had ever seen…

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Zach asked him quietly.

“I doubt our dagger can really control the sulrothum sand worm,” Zorian said. “But it’s too bad that

we already killed the giant hydra guarding the palace orb, I’ll say that much.”

It was just a suspicion, but Zorian felt it was likely that each knife was keyed in to a different

creature. Assuming that the strange flying sand worm was the divinely-enhanced guardian of the

imperial ring, it made sense that a knife that the sulrothum probably found near the ring was keyed

to it. By the same logic, the knife Zorian currently held in his hand was probably meant to control the

hydra instead, since it normally seemed to live in and guard the orb.

“Next time, then,” said Zach dreamily. “I like the idea of having my own pet hydra, you know? We

could pit it against the stupid sand worm while we tackle the sulrothum ourselves. Or we could throw

him at Quatach-Ichl, just to see the look on that stupid bag of bones when a massive hydra starts

screaming and charging at him… or just take it on a walk through Cyoria like some kind of oversized

dog and just soak in the people’s reactions… lots of potential there…”

Zorian looked at the dagger in his hand and then grasped it tightly.

Next time, indeed…

- break -

As the end of the restart began to approach, Zach and Zorian turned their attention to something

they had been gradually building up to throughout the entire restart – raiding the royal vaults for the

dagger again. They sought out Quatach-Ichl for help again, too – partially because they still hadn’t

grasped the details on the inner wards, so his help in getting inside was still critical, and partially

because they still had designs on his crown.

Zorian had to admit he was more morally conflicted about betraying Quatach-Ichl this time around.

After all, the ancient lich had been nothing but helpful throughout the entire restart. It felt

wrong, dishonorable, to just stab him in the back like this in the end…

Then again, didn’t Quatach-Ichl indicate during that initial negotiation they had with him that he

would return to interrogate them after his little invasion business was over? Perhaps he was just

looking for excuses to make himself better, but seen in that light this attack could easily be viewed

as pre-emptive defense on their part. Plus, the lich clearly intended to invade Cyoria as normal – a

fact he sometimes cryptically alluded to during his lessons, but one which he never actually made

clear to them. In a very real way, that was betrayal as well.

He supposed in the end it didn’t matter. Quatach-Ichl once again agreed to help them steal the

dagger from the Eldemar’s royal vaults. They once again achieved their goal, successfully fought

their way out of the capital city and then kept running from the Eldemar military until Quatach-Ichl

figured out the nature of the tracking device that was used to track them. They again opened a

dimensional gate to Xlotic and stepped through it…

The moment Quatach-Ichl followed after them they shut off the gate and attacked him with no

warning.

There was no talking. They attacked silently and without hesitation, and Quatach-Ichl took their

ambush entirely in stride. As an endless barrage of incinerating rays, impossibly sharp dimensional

blades and disintegration blasts suddenly rained down on him, he quietly blocked, dodged,

teleported and retaliated in return. He did not rage at their betrayal or try to talk to them to find out

their reasons. Perhaps he had been expecting it. Maybe he was just that used to sudden ambushes.

Whatever the case, he silently accepted their challenge and met their attack head on.

The desert quaked. Sand was melted and turned to glass over and over. Several hidden wards and

traps that Zach and Zorian prepared in the area in advance activated, only to be shattered and

neutralized by Quatach-Ichl. The ancient lich summoned a bunch of skeletal undead giants from

some internal storage space on his person and Zorian responded by throwing his combat golems at

them to keep them busy. Zach managed to shear off Quatach-Ichl’s leg with one of his attacks, but

the lich simply reattached it in the next moment. Three of Zorian’s simulacrums sacrificed

themselves to keep him alive when facing Quatach-Ichl’s counterattacks, their inhumanly tough

metallic bodies unable to withstand the ancient lich’s attacks.

It was then, right in the middle of the heated battle, that several hidden devices revealed themselves

in the distance, blanketing the whole area with small, fast-moving silver discs.

Most of the silver discs were completely mundane, meant purely to mask the real threats. Some of

them were infused with specialized magic meant to stress and overload typical force shields that

protected mages against physical projectiles.

And finally, a small number were special. They were infused with the same sort of soul severing

magic that was once used by Kael to make the coin that ended up banishing Quatach-Ichl back to

his phylactery.

In order to make sure Quatach-Ichl couldn’t simply push away all the discs with a simple wave of his

hand, Zach and Zorian immediately intensified their attacks. Despite that, Quatach-Ichl took the little

silver projectiles as a deadly threat, never letting a single one touch him, raising the ground as walls

and pillars to keep them at bay when the shield disruptors started to eat away at his magical shields.

But the silver discs did their job of occupying his attention anyway. So busy was he with avoiding

them, dealing with Zach and Zorian’s normal attacks and trying to counterattacks that he overlooked

a far larger silver disc hidden in the sands nearby. This disc was also imbued with soul severing

magic, and with a much more potent form of it, too.

Upon dodging one of their attacks, Quatach-Ichl ended up stepping on it and it visibly discharged a

wave of white light straight into him.

For a moment, the whole battlefield stilled. Quatach-Ichl was momentarily frozen in place, a look of

surprise on his face. Zach and Zorian waiting with bated breaths to see if the lich would collapse into

a lifeless pile of bones in the aftermath.

And then the lich moved.

“Heh,” Quatach said, speaking up for the first time since the battle had started. “You got me. But do

you really think a stupid trick like that can beat me?”

Well no. He did not think that. But as a distraction, it worked better than Zorian had ever hoped it

would.

The moment Quatach-Ichl had finished talking, a massive wave of dispelling energy erupted out of

Zach, powered by most of Zach’s remaining mana. It washed away everything in the vicinity,

completely catching Quatach-Ichl off guard. For just a moment, all of his defenses went down.

Including his mind blank.

Zorian immediately reached out with his mind and began his attack.

Quatach-Ichl’s mental defenses were impeccably made. They were thick and without any obvious

flaws, and he could rebuild them in an instant, just like Xvim. Considering his endless reserves of

mana, this meant that even Zorian would fail to break through them if he tried to gradually wear them

down. He could never hope to win a battle of attrition against the ancient lich, not to mention that

every second he failed to break through was a second that Quatach-Ichl could use to murder his

fleshy body to remove the mental threat he posed. Thus, Zorian held nothing back when attacking

the lich. He poured all of his mana into a quick succession of telepathic attacks.

After three such attacks, he was delighted to see some actual exploitable flaws starting to appear.

Quatach-Ichl was proficient enough in fixing the aftermath of a single mental attack, but multiple

ones in succession strained his defenses. As powerful as he was, the ancient lich had probably not

encountered a mind mage that could meaningfully threaten him for a very, very long time. His

defenses had probably once been truly flawless, but since he had not had to use them in ages, he

had gotten a bit rusty.

Too rusty to stop Zorian, in any case.

With one final push, Quatach-Ichl’s mental barrier shattered into countless pieces, leaving his mind

defenseless before Zorian’s telepathic might. Letting lose an ear-splitting scream of incoherent rage,

Quatach-Ichl swung his skeletal hand towards Zorian, firing a jagged red ray in his general direction.

Zorian did not stop. Even when the ray hit him, severing his left arm just below the shoulder and

sending waves of incredible pain throughout his whole body, he did not stop. He sank deeper and

deeper into Quatach-Ichl’s mind, paralyzing his skeletal body and starting to root through his long-

term memories…

Without warning, the mind Zorian was invading suddenly disappeared. The bones Quatach-Ichl had

been animating fell to the ground, lifeless.

The lich had admitted defeat and fled.

“Ha! We… we did it!” yelled Zach breathlessly. “Oh man, I can’t believe we actually succeeded in

beating the stupid bag of bones. We– Oh shit. Zorian, your arm!”

“Y-Yeah, I know,” Zorian said, looking at the mangled stump connected to his left shoulder. “I’m…

not feeling too well. I think I’m going to lie down a little.”

Zach was saying something, but Zorian could no longer hear him. Everything was kind of fuzzy and

eventually he just closed his eyes and let himself fall to the ground.

- break -

Two hours later, Zorian had woken up from unconsciousness only to find Zach beside him and his

wound professionally bandaged. It was just something he had learned while learning medical magic,

Zach explained. Apparently his teachers had insisted he learn some good old-fashioned mundane

care for the injuries, and lost limbs were included in these lessons.

So now Zorian would get to experience what it was like to live with a missing arm for a few days.

Lovely. The time loop was a gift that just kept on giving. In any case, they had to move fast.

Quatach-Ichl was bound to be utterly furious with them, and they weren’t really sure how long it

would take him to possess another body and come after them. They had learned that this time

varied a lot from lich to lich while researching the topic, ranging from a few hours to several days.

Considering how good Quatach-Ichl was, they should probably assume it was the shorter option.

After hurriedly breaking into the time magic research facility beneath Cyoria, they asked Guardian of

the Threshold about the crown and dagger they had newly acquired. They quickly found out that

they had guessed correctly – the crown gave the Controller the ability to place temporary markers on

people, bringing them into the time loop for a limited time, while the dagger gave the Controller an

ability to place a special kind of marker on a soul of the target, letting the time loop know it should

not recreate their soul in future restarts. Soulkill, as Red Robe called it.

Just like the orb and the ring, both items also had a mundane function that even normal people could

use. The crown acted as a personal mana storage, which they already knew thanks to Quatach-Ichl,

but it was nice to have confirmation anyway. In particular, Quatach-Ichl’s story had not made it clear

whether the amount of personal mana stored in the crown was proportional to the one using it or

fixed. Now they knew it was fixed in size. For Quatach-Ichl this gave him ten times more mana

reserves than he usually had, but for Zorian it would be far more since his reserves were relatively

tiny in comparison. Though it would also take him forever to fully fill up the crown, as well.

As for the dagger, it had the ability to ‘cut that which cannot be cut’… or to put it more plainly, it could

hurt immaterial spirits. An ability that was probably far more impressive in the distant past, when

spirits were around every corner and a pissed-off god could send their servants to mess you up at

any time. These days, its base ability was of dubious usefulness.

Upon leaving the time magic research facility, they temporarily set the dagger aside and started

feverishly tinkering with the crown, trying to figure how to activate its ability to place temporary

markers while sending urgent messages to every member of their little conspiracy. Thankfully, by

now they had a fair bit of experience in making imperial artifacts work, so after a few hours they

succeeded in figuring out how the crown worked.

And then they got to work. By now, a whole throng of people had gathered around them. It was not

just people like Alanic, Xvim, Silverlake and Daimen that were there. There were also various

teachers from the academy, some of whom Zorian was familiar with (Ilsa, Nora and Kyron) and

some of whom he wasn’t, but which Xvim assured him were dependable and could be counted on.

Kirma, Torun and several other select members of Daimen’s team were also there, as was his

fiancée Orissa and some of the members of her House. Many, many aranea were also scattered

about, hailing from the Silent Doorway Adepts, Luminous Advocates, Filigree Sages and others that

Zorian felt could be helpful and wouldn’t freak out. Lukav was also here, as were some other people

that Alanic had vouched for.

While Zach and Zorian had been running around Blantyrre, planning how to beat Quatach-Ichl and

scouting out the sulrothum in the ziggurat of the sun, their fellow conspirators had been tasked with

gathering all these people and informing them about the time loop. Thus, everyone here knew what

they were dealing with. They did not necessarily believe in this crazy story, but that didn’t really

matter because seeing was believing.

The restart was soon going to end, and then they would experience the truth first-hand.

Zorian steeled himself a little and went out to face the crowd around them.

“Zorian… what the hell happened to your arm!?” Taiven asked him with a horrified expression.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving her off with his one remaining hand. “I’ll get it back soon, as good

as new.”

“So!” said Zach happily. “Who wants to be first?”

Chapter 086

A New World

“Good morning, brother!” Kirielle screamed, her voice disgustedly shrill and cheerful. “Morning,

morning, MORNING!!!”

Zorian sighed, stretching his arms and legs while Kirielle babbled on top of him. Another restart,

another annoying wakeup call from Kirielle. He gave his little sister a silent, complex look, which

caused her to hesitate for a second and ask him what’s wrong. Zorian didn’t answer. Instead he

suddenly started shaking like a madman, taking advantage of that brief moment of indecision when

she loosened her grip on him to push her off to the side. She fell on the floor with a soft thud and an

indignant yell. She was back on her feet in a flash, though, annoying him with questions about the

academy and requests to ‘show her some magic’.

In other words, she was still the same old Kirielle he had come to know over the restarts. He had

thought about including her among the many people who gotten a temporary marker in the previous

restart, but in the end he had decided bringing her into the time loop would be reckless and cruel.

Unlike the others, Kirielle was just a child. Her personality had yet to fully form, and there was no

telling how being stuck in a constantly repeating month would warp her thinking. She also couldn’t

keep a secret to save her life and had no way to really contribute to their projects. Not to mention

that if he failed to find the way to extend the temporary markers before the sixth restart was up, he

would have to watch her forget six months’ worth of memories… that would be a hard pill to swallow.

No, the idea was definitely off-limits. While he would have appreciated a chance to have more

meaningful interaction with Kirielle, it wasn’t worth inflicting existential dread on a nine-year-old and

dragging down everyone’s chances of survival just for that.

After a few minutes, he finally coaxed Kirielle into leaving the room. He promptly locked the door and

created a single simulacrum. It was a simple ectoplasmic copy. This early in the restart, he had

neither the time nor the materials to create the golem bodies necessary for the improved mechanical

simulacrums he usually liked to use. However, accessibility was more important than mana

efficiency in this case. He needed the simulacrum now and not later.

The moment it popped into existence, the simulacrum gave him a silent nod and then teleported

away. There was no need to explain anything. The simulacrum had a simple task, planned out all the

way in the previous restart and now simply put into practice. His copy was to go to Cyoria and

immediately hunt down and dismantle all four cephalic rat swarms lurking in the city. It would

doubtlessly alarm Quatach-Ichl if he did that, but it had to be done. With all these new time loopers

walking around, the swarms were too much of a threat. They needed them gone, and the sooner it

was done, the better.

After dispatching the simulacrum to his task, Zorian went down into the kitchen to eat something

while waiting for Ilsa to arrive. He couldn’t help but be a little nervous. While Ilsa’s visit at the

beginning of the restart had long since become repetitive and routine, meeting his invocations

teacher should be different this time around. She was, after all, one of the people they placed a

temporary marker on. If everything went well, she had retained her memories of the previous restart.

He shook his head, trying to collect his thoughts. He was kind of annoyed at himself for being so

emotional over this. Previously, when he and Zach were considering going down this road, he had

imagined himself facing this scenario with a stoic attitude and cool assurance borne out of years of

experiences and conflicts in the time loop… but reality was cruel and his nerves were not as steely

as he imagined them to be. Would the temporary markers work as advertised? Would they work at

all? Would Ilsa be able to take first-hand experience of the time loop in good grace or would she flip

out and start flinging spells at him, demanding answers? He couldn’t help but worry about questions

such as this as minutes ticked by. What was taking her so long, anyway? He wasn’t sure, but he

thought it didn’t usually take this much time before she–

There was a knock at the door.

“I’ll get it!” said Zorian quickly, rushing for the door. Mother looked amused at this kind of reaction,

but said nothing as he ran past her.

He opened the door and found Ilsa standing there. She looked… no different than she usually did at

the beginning of the restart. The same clothes, the same judging look, the same stack of documents

held in her hands. However, that was only outward appearance. To his empathic senses, she was

practically radiating uncertainty and apprehension.

They stared at each other in silence for a while.

“May I come in?” Ilsa eventually asked.

“Hmm? Oh!” said Zorian with a small laugh, wincing inwardly at his behavior. “I guess I spaced out a

little. Forgive my manners, Miss Zileti. Come in, please.”

“Thank you, Mister Kazinski,” she said, stepping into the house.

Although his momentary brain freeze wasn’t the most flattering way to start a meeting like this, it

seemed to have put Ilsa at ease somewhat, as he felt a lot of the tension drain out of her in the

aftermath.

Like usual, Mother immediately left the house when she realized who had come, taking Kirielle with

her. This left Zorian alone with Ilsa to ostensibly discuss his electives and whatnot. But, well…

“Same as the last time, I suppose?” Ilsa asked, waving the academy documents in front of her.

When Zorian answered yes, she simply threw the stack to the side and sighed. “Of course. You

probably heard this all a hundred times by now. I don’t even know why I brought these along with

me.”

“Clinging to a sense of normalcy in light of a very bizarre situation,” Zorian guessed. “I was the

same, back when I was first dragged into the time loop. I spent quite a few loops going through the

motions.”

“You were a teenager who barely started learning magic, though. I am an experienced adult mage. I

should be better than this,” Ilsa countered, frowning slightly. She was silent for a few seconds,

tapping her fingers against the table as she considered what to say next. “So this is real? We really

travelled back in time?”

“It’s a little more complex than that, but yes,” Zorian said. He didn’t want to get bogged down in

details of how the time loop actually worked. “Did the marker we gave you work?”

“Obviously,” she scoffed. “How would we be having this conversation otherwise?”

“What I meant was… did you completely retain your magic and memories?” Zorian clarified. “Any

holes in your recollection or difficulty in doing magic?”

“That’s a possibility?” she asked, surprised.

“It might be. As I said in the previous restart, this is the first time we have done something like this,”

Zorian said.

She gave it a thought for a minute before shaking her head.

“I don’t feel there are any obvious blanks in my memories,” she said. “I did forget quite a few things,

but I think that’s just me being forgetful as usual. My memory is hardly flawless. As for magic, well…

I’m a grown mage that has reached most of her potential years ago and a month is not that long of a

time. Plus, it wasn’t like I did any real training sessions in the span of this month.”

“In other words, any growth in shaping skills you may have experienced is so miniscule that you

wouldn’t even notice if it was gone,” Zorian surmised.

“Yes, that,” Ilsa nodded. “I guess I can learn a new spell or two this time just to see if I retain them

the next time the world… resets.”

“I can probably just ask Kael. The effect of even one month on his shaping skills and spell

knowledge should be dramatic enough to tell,” pointed out Zorian.

“I suppose that’s true,” said Ilsa. “Plus, now that I think about it, I’m probably going to improve my

shaping skills and learn quite a few new spells just by helping you out over time. Though you never

did really explain what you wanted our help with…”

“Yes, we did not explain our plans and reasons too deeply in the previous restart,” admitted Zorian.

“Partly because we didn’t want to overwhelm people with information, but also because we

suspected you would only take us seriously after you witnessed the time loop with your own two

eyes.”

“Ha. Well, you’re probably right about that,” Ilsa laughed. “Xvim tried to explain how the time loop

worked when he was trying to convince me to accept a mysterious soul marker from my two teenage

students. I confess I didn’t pay too much attention to it, since the whole idea was so crazy. I’d have

probably been even less interested in what you and Zach had to say.”

Well, at least she was honest.

“Do you want me to explain now?” Zorian asked.

“No,” she said immediately. “I don’t think I could pay attention well enough at the moment. I’m still

rather disturbed at reliving the same month all over again. You said this has been happening for a

while now?”

“Yes. The time loop has repeated itself many, many times,” Zorian said. “This is just your first time

remembering it.”

“So, before this I was just... obliviously reliving the same month over and over again? Repeated the

jobs, taught the same classes and spoke the same conversations?”

“Well, sometimes me and Zach shook things up a bit and you reacted accordingly, reacting to the

changes,” Zorian said. “But yes. Without a marker, people do not retain continuity across restarts.”

“I tried to talk to some of the people around me before coming here,” Ilsa admitted. “Just to check if

they really don’t remember anything. I couldn’t resist. I don’t think I revealed anything crucial, but I

feel it’s only fair to let you know.”

Zorian sighed. He suspected she wasn’t the only one to make such ‘discreet’ tests, and that there

would be more of that stuff to deal with later… but that was okay. They kind of expected that.

“I understand the need for confirmation, but please try to be responsible about this,” he said. “It

would be a disaster if the knowledge of the time loop reached certain people.”

“And now I’m being lectured by one of my teenage students,” Ilsa said, clacking her tongue. “How

low the mighty have fallen. But fair enough, I do understand we have a mighty, millennia-old lich

breathing down our necks. Your fight against him has left quite an impression on me, I must say…”

Zorian just made a slightly sour expression in response. Unsurprisingly, Quatach-Ichl had taken

great offense at them trying to look through his memories and stealing his crown. While Zach and

Zorian were placing temporary markers on people, Quatach-Ichl was burning down the Noveda

estate and Imaya’s house as the first step of his revenge. Fortunately, all inhabitants of Imaya’s

place had been evacuated to Koth by that point, and Zach couldn’t care less about the Noveda

estate. The ancient lich remained quiet after that, probably because he couldn’t find them and still

had an invasion to execute.

Then Zach and Zorian had the bright idea to bring the new loopers to Cyoria on invasion day, to

show them how high the stakes really were. Despite being under a plethora of powerful divination

wards and constantly moving, Quatach-Ichl somehow noticed them.

The resulting fight completely leveled the street they were fighting in.

“Though Quatach-Ichl is a huge danger, I’m pretty sure the Eldemarian government, the Triumvirate

Church, powerful Noble Houses and other powers would also make problems for us if they knew,”

Zorian said. “So please be careful.”

They spent the next half an hour discussing various things – the mechanics of the time loop, the way

things usually developed if Zach and Zorian did not interfere with things, and the details behind the

Ibasan invasion. Ilsa turned out to be just as interested in the invasion of Cyoria as she was in the

time loop itself. Then again, that was probably not too unusual. They brought people to witness the

attack for a reason.

“You don’t seem to care much for the suffering and devastation we witnessed,” Ilsa eventually said,

a note of condemnation in her voice.

“I’m just a little numb to it all, that’s all. I’ve seen it happen too many times, sometimes from the

memories of the invaders themselves,” Zorian said. “It’s impossible for me to have the same visceral

reaction to it that you probably have.”

“You read their memories?” she asked, surprised.

“I had to,” he simply said.

“Of course you’ve dabbled in mind magic too,” she said in a strange tone.

“Dabbled?” Zorian huffed. “This annoys me more than it probably should. I did not ‘dabble’ in it – I’m

a natural mind mage who spent years honing his skills.”

She seemed to be at a loss for words upon hearing that.

“This situation is endlessly bizarre and disturbing,” she finally said after a few seconds.

“Agreed,” Zorian nodded. “I’ve been stuck in this time loop for nearly eight years, not counting all the

time dilation chambers, and I still think that.”

“Time dilation chambers?” Ilsa asked. She suddenly shook her head. “No, never mind that for now.

Eight years is actually not as long as I thought it would be.”

“I got included rather late into this thing,” Zorian said. “Zach is the one who has spent decades inside

the time loop.”

“Ugh. Every answer gives me five new questions,” Ilsa complained. “You know what? Let’s stop this

for now. You are planning to take the train to Cyoria, right?”

“Yes, I’m taking Kirielle with me, so I need to pretend I’m somewhat normal. Of course, if you are

willing to teleport us to Cyoria yourself…”

“No,” she said immediately. “I’m taking a train ride with you instead.”

Zorian was taken aback at the proclamation. He knew that things would be very much different now

that other loopers were walking around, but he couldn’t help but get blindsided by things like this.

“Uh, why?” Zorian asked uncertainly.

“You might be used to it, but I’ve just watched the city get brutally invaded by hordes of monsters

and undead,” she told him. “I’d like to stay away from Cyoria for a while, and this is a convenient

excuse.”

“Oh,” he said lamely.

Come to think of it, it had only been a few hours at most since the invasion, at least from her

perspective.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked him.

“Not at all,” he said, shaking his head. “Just watch out for Kirielle if you plan to ride in the same

compartment as us. She has an intense interest in magic and anything related to it, and she’s

probably going to find you absolutely fascinating.”

“I don’t see a problem with that,” Ilsa smiled. “It’s nice to see kids interested in my work.”

Zorian didn’t bother to clarify things.

Some things were better as a surprise.

- break -

Mother did not look very surprised when Ilsa informed her she would be accompanying them to the

train station. It probably seemed entirely sensible to her that Ilsa would use a train to get back to

Cyoria. The two of them got along pretty well with one another, and were soon happily chatting along

as they waited on the station for the train to arrive. Zorian mostly ignored the conversation, as it

sounded like your typical parent-teacher discussion. Kirielle was too excited about going to Cyoria to

care about the teacher that had decided to stick around for a while longer, but Fortov did feel the

need to approach the group and say hi after seeing Ilsa present. That was a little new.

“You didn’t include Fortov among those who received the marker,” Ilsa observed quietly.

“No,” Zorian whispered back. “He’s useless and I don’t like him.”

Ilsa had nothing to say in response to that, just giving him a guarded look in return.

Maybe he really was a little harsh towards Fortov. Still, he honestly couldn’t see any good reason to

give the guy a temporary marker. Fortov was unreliable and had no work ethic, so including him in

the time loop would be about as wise as including Kirielle.

Eventually they boarded the train and set off towards Cyoria. Kirielle became more wary of Ilsa when

she realized the teacher was going to stay in the same compartment as them, but… well, it was

Kirielle. Patience was never her strong suit. She barely lasted half an hour before she started

bombarding Ilsa with questions.

Ilsa was a patient woman, but after an hour and a half of Kirielle’s chattiness, Zorian could feel she

was starting to get rather exasperated with the whole situation. Thus, he decided to have mercy on

her and distracted his little sister with a bunch of visually impressive illusions and stories.

Ilsa observed the illusionary scenes he conjured up with a surprising amount of interest. Try as he

might, he just couldn’t figure out what she found so fascinating about those. Weren’t they just

illusions? She was a mage at the continent’s best magical academy. Surely she had seen plenty of

those in her life…

Eventually he decided to ask her. Since he didn’t want Kirielle to listen in on them, he established a

mental link to her and spoke to her telepathically. She was badly startled at first, flinching at the

sudden voice in her head, but she recovered quickly. Her response was swift and smooth, with no

unintentional thoughts leaking through. It was clear that she had experience with this kind of

communication.

[You can ignore the shaping disruption of the train wards,] Ilsa telepathically sent back through the

link. [I mean, of course you can. For someone like you, doing that is a minor thing. I could do it too.

However, casting such sophisticated illusions while being suppressed by the wards… that takes

considerable skill. Did you say you were trying to pretend you are ‘somewhat normal’? How is this

even remotely normal?]

[Err, well… it’s not like Kirielle can really tell how amazing this is,] he sent back lamely.

Truthfully, neither could he until this point. He learned these illusions pretty much solely to entertain

Kirielle. They were just little tricks to him, and so was the ability to bypass the laughable disruption

wards on the train. It completely slipped his mind that someone like Ilsa could figure out exactly what

he was doing and how difficult it was and find it notable.

[So,] Ilsa sent. [You are good enough at combat magic to fight a thousand-year-old lich. You are a

mind mage and an illusionist. You can teleport around with ease and open dimensional gates. You

can create duplicates of yourself. You are an expert golem maker, with all that implies. You say you

achieved all of that in, what, eight years?]

[Pretty much, yeah,] Zorian confirmed.

[Forgive me for being blunt here, Mister Kazinski, but aren’t you a fairly average mage?] Ilsa asked

curiously. [I never got an impression that you are some amazingly talented person from the

information I was given. And trust me, people had looked into it. Whenever a world-class talent like

Daimen appears, their family is always investigated in case their boons run in the blood.]

[Aside from being an innate mind mage, I am indeed pretty average,] Zorian said calmly. Ilsa’s

comment might have infuriated him once, but these days he no longer cared. [I know what you’re

thinking, and yes – my rapid growth as a mage is all due to the time loop. It doesn’t just give time,

you know. It’s also given me nigh-limitless resources, access to restricted materials and plenty of

normally unobtainable experience. It’s also put me under enormous pressure, keeping me constantly

motivated in a way I otherwise wouldn’t be. I honestly think anyone could do what I did, if put in the

same position. Well, provided they didn’t just break under the pressure…]

Ilsa stayed quiet for a while, but Zorian could practically feel the gears turning in her head. She was

probably realizing for the first time the sort of amazing opportunity the time loop represented.

[I think I’m getting just a tiny bit jealous of you, Mister Kazinski,] Ilsa eventually concluded.

[Don’t envy me just yet,] he told her. [There is still a good chance that I will get erased in the end,

and everything I have worked for will be for naught.]

[What?] she asked, startled. [What do you mean?]

With that, he started explaining the situation in detail to her. He told her about Red Robe, the

uncertainty about whether they could even get out of the time loop, the problems he had to solve to

survive the exit, and so on.

It took a while to go through everything. Strangely enough, Ilsa looked calmer and more reassured

by the end, even though he had just told her there was a big chance they would all lose everything

at the end. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange. She already knew that temporary markers like

her own only lasted six months. Compared to that, a more distant deadline that would also destroy

Zach and Zorian probably didn’t seem so intimidating. On the contrary, she may have found it

reassuring that they also had the same fate waiting for them, if they failed.

[I was wondering why you decided to include so many people in this time loop, instead of just

monopolizing the whole thing for yourself and Zach. Your situation is quite desperate,] she said,

humming to herself audibly enough for Kirielle to hear her and give her funny looks.

[You don’t have to sound so happy about it,] Zorian groused. [But yes, we really do need your help

badly.]

Ilsa was mostly included because of her connections. Though she acted a bit low key most of the

time, she knew many people and was owed quite a few favors. Hopefully, she could help them

convince people to go along with whatever crazy plans they came up with and smooth any ruffled

feathers they caused along the way. Considering how few other members of their little conspiracy

were diplomatically inclined or familiar with bureaucratic wrangling, this was a valuable skill.

Plus, she was a powerful alteration expert. Zorian wasn’t sure, but he felt she might be able to help

him produce his golems faster. She couldn’t animate them, of course, but he was currently

producing such a large number of them every restart that it took a while to simply create enough

mechanical bodies for animation. If Ilsa was as good at alteration and material alchemy as Xvim

claimed, she should be able to take over that part of the production process and free Zorian to do

other things.

[Why not just hire someone to do that for you?] Ilsa asked when he told her that. [I hear from Xvim

you’ve been doing that a lot already.]

[I can’t,] Zorian shook his head. [Anyone I contract will surely figure out what I intend to do with such

a sophisticated metal doll, and making combat-capable golems is forbidden without a license.]

[Makes sense,] Ilsa said. [You don’t want to have random mages building themselves a private army

of golems in their free time.]

[Exactly,] Zorian said. [I might be able to coax a person to build me a single puppet, but if I order a

batch of twenty puppets, they’ll freak out. Nobody wants to get implicated in an attempted rebellion

or whatever. I’d be lucky if they didn’t immediately report me to the government when they throw me

out of the shop.]

Ilsa nodded. After some thought, she changed the subject. [You know, all this talk about golems and

alteration is reminding me of something I thought of when you were explaining how the time loop

works. Destroying the entire world and then recreating it out of nothing… it reminds me of a

persistent ambition of mine…]

[Oh? You mean true creation?] Zorian guessed.

[You know about it?] Ilsa was surprised. [I don’t remember talking about it around you… I suppose

one of my previous incarnations told you about it?]

[Yeah,] Zorian confirmed. [I sought you out quite often in the beginning to learn from you. You taught

me much of what I know right now, or at least gave me a push in the right direction.]

[We’ll have to talk about that more on some other occasion,] Ilsa said with a smile. [It looks like you

owe me and I don’t even know about it. How am I supposed to know to seek you out for favors if I

don’t even know that I have leverage over you? But anyway, true creation… yes, in a way, the time

loop is the ultimate expression of that desire of mine. A magic that creates an entire world, over and

over again. Are you sure you have no idea how it is done?]

[No, sorry,] Zorian said apologetically. [That power is absolutely godlike in scope and mystery. Or

rather, primordial, since the Sovereign Gate seems to be made out of one of those.]

[Considering the stories of mortal mages doing it in the past, and in light of the fact that there is a

device that can repeatedly create an entire world, I am convinced it is easier than most people

suspect. Maybe I’ll be able to figure something out by observing this constantly recreated world I’m

in,] Ilsa said wistfully.

[Maybe,] Zorian said doubtfully. He doubted she would really get anywhere with that, but he wouldn’t

stop her.

Eventually, Kirielle dozed off and the telepathic conversation died down a little, leaving both Zorian

and Ilsa lost in their own thoughts.

The train continued its routine journey to Cyoria.

- break -

When Zorian, Kirielle and Ilsa arrived in Cyoria and disembarked, they found there were people

already waiting for them. Zach being there was kind of expected, but he was also accompanied by

Xvim, Kyron and Taiven. Most people did not react to this, of course, but Kirielle knew damn well

that there was something fishy about that and kept giving everyone weird glances and got really

quiet for a time. Zorian also noticed Fortov staring at him weirdly in the distance. He wasn’t sure how

much his brother really knew about him, but he was probably aware that Zorian hadn’t had any real

friends until recently, so having a bunch of people wait for him at the train station was beyond

unusual. He did not make any move or approach, though, since nobody was attacking anyone and

Zorian didn’t look like he needed help.

After dropping off Kirielle at Imaya’s place, the group found a secluded location and started talking.

Kyron, their combat magic instructor, was included into the group due to his high combat skills and

the fact he had connections to people in Eldemar’s military. He was the first to speak up.

“These temporary markers you placed on us to retain our memories… can they be revoked?” Kyron

asked.

Of course the first thing they wanted to discuss was the markers. Zorian didn’t blame them. He knew

he would have been the same if he were in their place. He was kind of mystified why they hadn’t just

asked Zach about that while they were waiting instead of saving it until now, but maybe they had

talked about other things, such as how the time loop worked. Or maybe they had just gathered

together quite recently and hadn’t had the time to discuss anything. He knew that Zach hated waiting

and had a habit of showing up late, so he probably hadn’t been at the train station for long.

“Yes,” Zorian told him bluntly.

“At will?” Kyron asked next.

“Well, we need the crown that is currently in Quatach-Ichl’s possession to do it,” Zorian said

carefully. “So not really, no.”

“Also, removing the marker only prevents you from keeping your magic and memories when the

world resets next,” Zach said. “It doesn’t wipe away what you achieved until that point.”

“Can the marker be reapplied once it runs out or is revoked?” Xvim asked.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Zach sighed. “Sadly, it’s not that easy. Yes, you can place a marker on

the same person the second time, but only after twelve restarts have passed. You can’t just remove

the marker and then reapply it to extend the time.”

“I imagined it was something like that,” Xvim admitted.

Zorian suddenly yelped in pain. After looking around, he realized Taiven had pinched his arm for no

discernible reason.

“Why did you do that!?” he protested.

“I wanted to make sure your arm is really fine,” she said, frowning.

Zorian suddenly realized this was the same arm that ended up getting cut off by Quatach-Ichl in the

previous restart. He had pretty much been a cripple the last time that she had seen him.

Still, how the hell was it okay for her to just pinch him like that!? Huffing with indignation, Zorian

stepped away from Taiven and maneuvered himself to place Ilsa between the two of them. Ilsa gave

him an amused look in response.

“So what’s the plan?” Kyron said.

“We are hoping we can figure out a way to adjust the temporary markers into lasting indefinitely,”

Zorian said. “Admittedly, tampering with a piece of magic that probably had gods involved in its

construction sounds hopeless… but we suspect that Red Robe entered the time loop through this

very method. If so, it should be possible for us to do it as well.”

“Right, if Red Robe could have done it, surely all of us working together should be able to work

something up,” Zach said.

“And if you fail?” Xvim insisted.

“We will hopefully gather the entire Key before all six restarts run out, at which point we will be able

to unblock the exit,” Zorian said. “If we have an exit method also ready by then, we might be able to

just get you out of the time loop at that point. At which point it doesn’t really matter that your marker

will run out.”

“And what, you’re just going to continue in the time loop alone afterwards?” Taiven asked. “Or are

you just going to create new temporary loopers once we’re gone? And then get them out too? I don’t

know about the rest, but I think the world doesn’t need three different Taivens.”

“Actually, we would just exit the time loop with you,” Zach said. “We already got almost everything

we could wish for out of the time loop. No need to risk everything by being greedy and cutting things

close. If we can leave six months from now, we will.”

Silence greeted this proclamation. Zorian knew that the new loopers were worried about their

motives, afraid that he and Zach were trying to make use of them as much as possible before

discarding them. Not an unreasonable fear. Temporary markers were pretty much designed with that

in mind. Presumably the controller would place these on people without ever informing them of the

time limit, allowing them to reap all the benefits of having a person work with them for six months

and then conveniently forgetting everything. However, Zach and Zorian did not intend to use the

temporary markers just to get a convenient workforce. They got them into the mess and they would

do their best to get them out of it. Maybe they would fail in the end, but it wouldn’t be for the lack of

trying.

“Well,” Xvim eventually said, breaking the silence. “We’d best get to work, then.”

- break -

Days passed, and the effects of the many new loopers rapidly became evident. Kael arrived in

Cyoria earlier, barely a day after Zorian did. Lukav and Alanic did not need to be saved from

Sudomir’s machinations. Taiven no longer bothered hunting monsters with her team. Ilsa’s classes

were completely different, since she decided she would shake things up a bit. The cephalic rats had

been completely wiped out by Zorian’s simulacrum on the very first day of the restart, with the

exception of a handful of individuals the simulacrum had saved up for study. Their usual routine of

convincing Xvim, Alanic and Silverlake that the time loop was real became unnecessary, freeing up

a surprisingly substantial amount of time.

Finally, not having to gain the trust of the Silent Doorway Adepts before they could use their ability to

operate the Bakora Gate network meant they could access distant places from the very start of the

restart.

Thus, once Zach and Zorian had sorted out the situation in Cyoria for a bit, they used a Bakora Gate

to reach Koth so they could pick up the imperial orb… and maybe get themselves a pet hydra.

Before they did that, though, they decided to visit the Taramatula estate to see if everything was fine

there. Daimen had assured them that the people he had picked were reliable, but Zorian knew better

than anyone that Daimen said a lot of things…

When they arrived, they found the whole estate to be a hive of activity, people constantly coming

and going, and there were people already waiting for them. There was no need to justify themselves

or try to get them to admit Daimen was present, like they usually did the first time they contacted

them in the restart. Still, while not having to wait at the door was convenient, what came later was

not. Just like the new loopers back in Cyoria, the new loopers in Koth also wanted their questions

answered, and what was supposed to be just a short check-up ended up being a grueling question

and answer session that lasted for most of the day.

“I really hope this is a one-time thing,” Zorian groused later to Daimen. “You were supposed to

explain these sort of things to them, Daimen.”

“I did!” Daimen protested. “They just wanted to hear things from you, I guess. Can you blame them?”

“I guess not,” Zorian said. If Daimen had explained things fairly, then these people must surely know

it wasn’t Daimen who was really in charge. It made sense that they wanted to talk to the people who

are the source of the temporary markers and have first-hand information. “Anyway, did you get your

team ready? Will the Taramatula really cooperate when you inform them you want to send their best

trackers all the way to Blantyrre all of a sudden?”

This was the main reason he and Zach wanted Daimen’s cooperation, and why they allowed him to

include so many people into the marked group. To put it bluntly, they needed these people to find

the staff. They had managed to track down a Bakora Gate on Blantyrre in the previous restart,

thanks to the help from that lizardman king, but that was just the first step. The next was to track

down a tiny little staff on a giant, jungle-covered continent. To put it bluntly, this was something that

he and Zach alone were utterly incapable of doing. Zorian would never say this out loud to Daimen,

but he and his group were probably the most critical people to receive the temporary markers.

Without them, they would probably never find the staff. This was one of the primary reasons they

decided to go down this path to begin with.

“My team will listen to me, even if I tell them we’re going to Blantyrre through a dimensional gate

opened up by my little brother,” Daimen said proudly. “Hell, they’d probably go along with it even if I

alone received the marker, but they would complain more. With Torun, Kirma and other critical

members of the team also on board, though, everyone will readily fall in line. As for the

Taramatula… well, I’m not sure what level of support we can get out of them, but we will definitely

get something. The main problem is that we’re being a bit unreasonable and pushing for full

commitment to this project without the idea being even hinted at before now. That’s not how House

Taramatula usually does things, to say the least, so some tension and incredulity are to be

expected.”

“Will it help if I give you money and resources to throw at them?” Zorian asked. “I know House

Taramatula is not poor, but I’m pretty sure me and Zach could gather enough money to finance a

small state if we really try. Not to mention a large amount of priceless materials that cannot be

bought on the open market.”

Daimen looked at him with a strange mixture of horror and joy, his face alternating between various

unusual grimaces.

“I hate you,” he finally said. “You better plan to gift some of that money to your poor older brother

when we get out.”

“Aren’t you pretty well off?” Zorian asked, arching his eyebrow at him. “You’re even marrying into

nobility.”

“You can never have enough money,” Daimen said. “Never. And yes, please do send all that money

here if you can. Trying to flat out bribe the Taramatula directly with it wouldn’t go well, but I’m sure

they would look more favorably on the plan if we agreed to pay for all the equipment and

mercenaries out of our own pockets. And some completely unrelated gifts would probably be

appreciated.”

Zorian nodded and made a mental note to mention the matter to Zach.

And speaking of Zach, his fellow time traveler… well, one of his fellow time travelers, now… was

already waiting for them at the front gate, humming to himself happily.

Zorian didn’t have to ask to know what the other boy was thinking of at the moment.

“Say,” Zorian asked Daimen. “Do you know what the legality of owning a giant, magically-enhanced

hydra is in Eldemar? Just asking for a friend.”

Chapter 087

Agents of the Crown

Deep in the jungles of Koth, in what was otherwise an unremarkable patch of rainforest, a situation

was unfolding. The trees shook, the animals vacated the area in panic and the underbrush was

trampled underfoot as a gigantic, furious hydra thundered through the area in pursuit of its target. Its

eight heads fanned out and snapped angrily towards anything in the vicinity that failed to get out of

its way, breaking low-hanging branches and killing any animal that was too slow to flee.

As for Zorian, who was its target, he simply kept running and dodging while marveling at the

incredible speed with which the hydra was able to move through the thick vegetation of the

rainforest. He had thought its size would make maneuvering difficult and allow him to easily keep

ahead of it, but he had seriously underestimated its ability to just plow through everything in front of it

without stopping. He was purposely running through the most difficult terrain he could find and he

never even came close to losing it. It was constantly trailing just behind him.

A blue, translucent, ectoplasmic eye constantly trailed after Zorian, hovering above his head and

staring at the hydra. It was through this eye that Zorian was able to keep track of the hydra’s

movements and dodge its attacks, despite having his back turned to it. Otherwise, if he were forced

to run blind or had to periodically slow down to turn around, the hydra would have grabbed him a

hundred times by now. Though the spell itself was very simple, very few people would be able to

process information from two different perspectives like that. The fact Zorian could look both in front

of him and behind him at the same time, while maneuvering through a treacherous, obstacle-filled

jungle floor was proof that his experiments with mental enhancement were bearing some fruit.

The chase led them next to a fallen, rotting log covered in moss and mushrooms. Without its main

body slowing down at all, one of the hydra’s eight heads reached down and bit into it, lifting it out of

the ground and launching it at Zorian. Half a dozen monstrous centipedes and one very terrified

squirrel tumbled out of the rotting log as it sailed through the air, having hidden in it when they

noticed the rampaging hydra approaching. Zorian reacted instantly, making a few silent movements

and causing a bright red ectoplasmic hand to materialize in the air behind him and slap the log

aside. It collided with the nearby tree where it exploded into a shower of rotting wood. Both Zorian

and the hydra simply charged through the cloud of wooden shrapnel, one with the aid of magical

shields and the other through the power of supernatural toughness and regeneration.

“Zach, what the hell are you doing there!?” Zorian yelled. “I’ve been running for ages here! Did you

figure out the dagger or not!?”

Zach, who was trailing behind both of them while occasionally making funny poses and waving the

dagger in his hand at the hydra, seemed to pause at the question.

“It’s hard, okay!” he yelled back.

“I’m running low on mana here!” Zorian said. “If you don’t figure it out soon, I’m calling this off.”

In truth, the hydra posed very little threat to Zorian. If the situation ever got too dangerous, he could

have always teleported away or simply flown away too high for the hydra to reach. However, that

would leave it free to turn around and shift its attention to Zach, which would defeat the whole

purpose of this setup. The point of him leading the hydra on the merry chase through the Kothic

jungle was to give Zach the time he needed to figure out how to use the dagger on the hydra.

Something that didn’t seem to be going too well.

Oh well. On the bright side, if Zach couldn’t figure it out by the time Zorian ran out of mana, it would

be Zorian’s turn next. Zorian would actually prefer if he was the one who figured out how to use the

dagger, since he and Zach had agreed that whoever succeeded at this would get to ‘own’ the hydra.

He had a good feeling about his chances, since, unlike Zach, he had soul perception unlocked.

Surely that would–

“Hydra!” Zach suddenly shouted, dramatically pointing the dagger in the monster’s direction. “I am

your master now! Kneel before me!”

No less than three of the hydra’s head glanced towards Zach, giving him a hateful, contemptuous

look before returning their attention to Zorian again.

Before Zorian could say anything, Zach suddenly teleported right on top of the hydra and plunged

the dagger straight into its back.

Zorian wanted to scream at his fellow time traveler for being such an idiot. Not only had Zach

exposed himself to incredible danger, since the hydra’s heads could twist backwards to reach people

foolish enough to climb on its back with incredible speed and ease, the boy had also invalidated all

the effort Zorian invested into making sure the hydra was focused on him and him alone. Even if

Zach got away from this stunt completely unscathed – and he probably would, in all honestly – the

hydra would no longer ignore him from this point onward.

Indeed, the moment Zach popped into existence on top of the hydra’s back, before he even finished

plunging the dagger into its flesh, the monster was already stopping its charge, all eight of its heads

refocusing on this sudden new threat. However, the moment the dagger sank into its back, a strange

thing happened. Instead of simply ignoring the puny wound and biting down on Zach anyway, the

hydra suddenly stiffened as if paralyzed. Its many heads froze in the air, jaws still stretched wide for

a lethal bite, staring at Zach with confused, uncomprehending eyes.

“No way…” Zorian complained weakly.

“Ha ha!” Zach laughed, wrenching the dagger out of the wound and quickly straightening himself up.

The hydra’s back not being the most stable of grounds, he almost lost his balance upon doing that

and had to spend several seconds to stabilize himself. The hydra remained completely motionless

throughout all of that. Zach slapped the closest hydra head a few times playfully. “What did I tell you,

eh? I really am your master now. Kneel!”

The command seemed to break the hydra out of its paralysis. Without hesitation, it dropped to the

ground. Being a quadrupedal life form, it couldn’t really exactly kneel as such, so it instead just

dropped on its stomach and lowered its many heads on the ground. The sudden motion completely

unbalanced Zach, however, sending him tumbling down the creature’s back with a strangled cry. He

hit the ground with a dull thud, landing on one of the exposed rocks, and then spent the next minute

and a half rolling around in pain on the ground.

Zorian eyed the hydra for a few seconds before deciding not to approach for now. It was no longer

attacking him, but he had a feeling that might change if he made any moves towards its new

‘master’.

“There is no way that was the correct command phrase to activate the dagger, is it?” he eventually

asked.

“Ugh. Damn, this hurt,” said Zach, laboriously rising to his feet while using the nearby hydra as a

stabilizer. He did his best to dust himself off and get rid of the branches and bugs stuck in his hair.

“And no, that wasn’t the command phrase. The way to activate the dagger is to first cut yourself with

it to establish resonance and then cut the hydra to forge a bond with it and finalize the deal.”

Zorian gave him a curious look. “How the hell did you figure that out?”

“I, err, accidentally cut myself with it while trying to mess around with it while running,” Zach admitted

with an awkward laugh. He turned towards the hydra, whose many eyes diligently followed his every

move. “Anyway, who cares about that! It doesn’t matter how I discovered the dagger’s usage, all that

matters is that the hydra is finally mine! Well ours, but you know…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Zorian said, clacking his tongue. He’d normally be annoyed about losing a bet

like that, but it was probably better this way. There was no guarantee he would have uncovered such

a curious method of activation himself.

He felt the hydra’s mind a little. He kind of expected to find the hydra resentful of being effectively

enslaved like this, but he found the creature to be mostly curious instead. Confused and a little

scared too, but mostly just curious. It did not seem to harbor any ill will towards Zach. Zorian had

never heard of a monster control method that was that thorough and effective, and the hydra should

be highly resistant to mind control due to its unique mind anyway. He had a feeling this was more

than just control – in some strange way, the hydra was conditioned to regard the bond forged by the

dagger as innately legitimate and did not struggle against its bindings at all.

Zorian was torn between being impressed by the maker of the dagger for pulling it off and disturbed

that such a thing was possible.

In any case, the friendliness was only towards Zach. The moment Zorian tried to step closer the

hydra immediately jumped to its feet and interposed itself between Zorian and its master, hissing

and snapping its jaws at him menacingly.

“Oh come on,” Zorian complained. “That guy doesn’t need your protection from me. If anything, I

would need to be protected against him if we seriously fought…”

The hydra didn’t understand human speech, and probably wouldn’t have listened to him even if it

did. It was about to lunge at Zorian when Zach placed his hand on its flank and stopped it.

“Hey, knock it off,” Zach said. “That guy is our friend, okay? No eating friends.”

It took a few gestures and shouting before the hydra managed to understand what its new owner

was telling it, at which point it gave Zach something reminiscent of an incredulous look, as if unable

to believe Zach would be friendly to someone like Zorian, who had led it on a wild-goose chase for a

better part of an hour.

“I know, I know… he can be very annoying, but he’s very useful and mostly means well,” Zach said

sagely, patting the hydra gently on the flank.

The hydra directed one last unhappy hiss in Zorian’s direction before grudgingly standing down and

indicating it would allow him to get close without attacking him. Possibly.

Zorian folded his hands over his chest and gave Zach an unamused look.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll warm up to you in time,” Zach told him, grinning widely. “Princess is just

a little shy.”

What?

“W-What!?” Zorian blurted out.

“It’s a she,” Zach said, nodding sagely. “I know, I was a little surprised myself when I felt that through

the link and–”

“No, not that!” Zorian snapped. “You’re seriously naming a hydra ‘Princess’?”

“Why not?” Zach challenged. “What’s wrong with that name?”

The newly named ‘Princess’ focused three of her heads on him, as if daring him to say anything.

Stupid reptile. It didn’t even understand what they were talking about but felt the need to side with

Zach anyway…

“It’s a stupid name,” Zorian told him bluntly.

“It’s a great name,” Zach disagreed. “A royal name for a very royal girl. She’s a divinely empowered

guardian of an imperial item… that’s pretty high-ranked if you ask me. Plus, you know how royals

like to refer to themselves in plural? ‘We’ this and ‘we’ that… well, Princess here can talk about

herself in plural and be completely factual! So there. It’s actually very clever and you were just too

judgmental to figure it out.”

“Ugh,” Zorian grunted. “If that’s your logic, why not call her ‘Queen’ instead?”

“Because ’Princess’ is a more ironic name for a giant hydra,” Zach admitted.

Zorian spent the next fifteen minutes trying to argue the issue before giving up. It took another hour

after that to coax Princess back into the imperial orb for transport – she wanted to follow around after

Zach like a puppy, and was confused why he wanted to abandon her in the orb so soon after their

bonding.

Zorian had to say, watching Zach awkwardly try to convince a clingy hydra that he would be back

and that she should stay put was kind of amusing.

Perhaps it was a good thing that Zach ended up winning that bet after all.

- break -

After recovering the imperial orb and tentatively subduing the hydra guarding it, Zach and Zorian

turned their attention towards the sulrothum at the Ziggurat of the Sun and the imperial ring in their

possession. They already knew they could steal their ring if they launched a big enough attack on

them, but that took a great deal of time and effort. Well, the presence of Princess on the battlefield

would probably make an all-out assault a little easier this time around, but it would still be a major

undertaking that would consume a lot of their time and resources that would be better spent

elsewhere.

“It’s a pity Princess is too big to fit in the ziggurat corridors,” lamented Zach. “Otherwise we could just

climb on top of her and charge in, trampling and brushing aside any sulrothum that got in our way.”

“If our attack was that unstoppable, the sulrothum would probably just pick up whatever they can and

flee,” pointed out Zorian. “They’d probably flee underground, and it would be an utter pain to track

them down then. Not to mention they have a massive sand worm on their side. We don’t want to get

in an underground battle with them, I think, even with Princess on our side.”

“Hmph,” Zach mumbled unhappily. “How about we just infiltrate the ziggurat through this

underground connection, then? We might be able to avoid a massive battle that way.”

“They have their pet sand worm constantly guarding that,” Zorian pointed out, shaking his head

sadly. “I bet we’re noticed instantly through whatever exotic senses that thing has… and then it

collapses the whole tunnel on top of us before we can do anything. Considering the layout of their

Dungeon entrance, I think it was made by the worm in the first place, so they probably have no

qualms about destroying it. They can always command the sand worm to create another one later.”

Zach was silent for a while.

“How about… just soul-killing the entire colony?” Zach finally asked. “I mean, it makes me a little

uncomfortable to use tactics like that, but this is pretty much what the damn knife was made for.”

“It’s definitely an option,” Zorian said after a short pause. “However, we probably wouldn’t be able to

get all sulrothum with this and we don’t know how many of them know about the ring and its

importance. If we kill most of the colony but one of the survivors takes the ring and runs, things could

get really bad. Right now we know where the ring is. If a shattered group of sulrothum survivors

takes the ring and spends a day or two running around in the desert or, gods forbid, the depths of

the Dungeon…”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Zach said. “It’s too risky. Even if we get them all, there are neighboring

sulrothum tribes and other denizens of the desert to consider. If they discover the state of the

ziggurat and loot the ring before we reach it, we would still have a problem on our hands.”

“Speaking of the neighboring sulrothum tribes, do we still go forward with the idea of arranging an

alliance with them?” Zorian asked. “The idea is nice, I admit, but it may very well take more time and

effort to do it that way than to just send our own army at the ziggurat.”

“Not if we use Princess!” Zach declared triumphantly.

“You want to use the damn hydra for everything these days,” Zorian scoffed. “You’re like a little kid

who just got himself a new toy and now wants to show it to everyone. How the hell will that thing

help us convince the sulrothum faster?”

“There is no need to be jealous, Zorian,” Zach chided. “You lost the bet fair and square. In any case,

I think you greatly underestimate the impression of power we will project when we show up with a

giant menacing hydra in tow. I bet those tribes will be tripping over themselves to stay on our good

side after seeing that.”

“Or they’ll be too scared to even talk to us,” Zorian pointed out.

“Then we just smash them until they’re willing to listen,” Zach shrugged.

“This is starting to sound a lot less like arranging an alliance and a lot more like us bullying the

neighboring tribes into being our reluctant army,” Zorian pointed out.

“Eh, I think of it more as an ‘aggressive demonstration’ than bullying,” Zach said dismissively. “We

would have had to prove our strength for them to take us seriously, anyway. But really, so what if we

end up cowing them into submission forcefully? We’re already attacking the ziggurat tribe without

any provocation. We lost the moral high ground a long time ago, I think.”

True.

“Alright,” said Zorian. “Let’s try to make them willing allies if possible, though. I have another task I

want to give them, and they probably won’t try very hard if our overwhelming force is all that keeps

them in line.”

“Oh? Something important?” Zach asked.

“Maybe,” Zorian answered. “There is a magical creature called a tunneler toad, which lives deep

within the Xlotic desert. They live in a series of hidden worlds left by some forgotten ancient

civilization, called Ishmali Reservoirs by the ancient Ikosians, because they seem designed primarily

as water reservoirs. They’re basically large caverns full of water, enclosed in their own pocket

dimensions. The reservoirs are largely uninteresting, but the tunneler toads themselves have a

curious ability to detect pocket dimensions and enter them with ease. In their natural habitat they use

this to pass in and out of the Ishmali Reservoirs as they please, using them as a hidden nesting

ground, but the ability is said to be usable on any pocket dimension they come across.”

“Ah, I see, this is for that blood magic initiative you want to set up,” Zach said. “Why do you need the

sulrothum’s help for this, though? If the toads live only around these reservoir things, they should be

easy to find. It’s not like the reservoirs can move, right?”

“They’re static but I’m afraid the records of where the reservoirs are located have all been lost in the

Cataclysm, and no one had bothered to track them down again as far as I can tell,” Zorian said,

shaking his head. “With much of the interior now covered in desert and taken over by sulrothum

tribes and worse, the reservoirs have become extremely isolated. Not to mention that most people

are neither master dimensionalists nor tunneler toads, so they would be unable to track down and

enter these hidden worlds even if they wanted to. Thus, if we want to find tunneler toads, we must

find a desert native that has heard about strange toads that sometimes seemingly vanish into thin

air, only to just as suddenly reappear later.”

“Annoying,” Zach remarked with a frown. “Is this really necessary? We have lots of candidates for

ability theft when it comes to magical creatures with relevant abilities.”

“None of them are easy to track down,” Zorian pointed out. “Not only are they rare and mostly extinct

near human-dominated territories, the very nature of their abilities means these creatures can hide

and retreat with incredible ease. The other may very well be even more annoying to find. If you think

tunneler toads are bad, wait till you hear how annoying it is to track down a phase spider without it

taking the initiative to reveal itself.”

“Right,” Zach said, clacking his tongue unhappily. “I guess I’ll try to be a little nicer to the stupid

wasps.” He paused for a second. “So we’re really going to start dabbling in blood magic and

enhancement rituals in this restart, then?”

“Yes. Although we should start with something relatively easy and well tested,” Zorian confirmed.

“Eagle Eyes enhancement, for instance. Or any of the simple physical enhancements that aim to

improve the user’s strength, stamina, regeneration and so on. Well-known, straightforward things

that are unlikely to go catastrophically wrong when attempted by beginners like us.”

“Not really instilling me with a sense of confidence here, Zorian,” Zach complained.

“What can I say?” Zorian shrugged. “Blood magic is dangerous. If it makes you feel any better, I will

be going first.”

“It does not,” Zach said. “We both know it will be me who has to take the biggest risks in regards to

this. I have way more mana to burn on permanent enhancements and I am also proficient in medical

magic, so I will be able to push my limits more and understand life force manipulation way better

than you.”

Zorian didn’t dispute him. While he had no intention of piling most of the risk on Zach, his fellow time

traveler was likely right in his prediction.

“Eh, don’t make such a grim face,” Zach said dismissively. “I already agreed we should do this when

we talked before, didn’t I? I didn’t change my mind.”

“I kind of feel I’m pressuring you over this,” Zorian admitted.

“I’m not that easy to pressure,” Zach assured him. “You’ve been trying to pressure me to let you

inspect my mind for a long time now, for instance, and I have never let you do it.”

“I still think that’s a mistake,” Zorian told him.

“And the answer is still no,” Zach said, grinning. “See? Pressure ineffective. I agreed with this creepy

blood magic stuff because I honestly think you’re right. We’re too slow at figuring out primordial

prisons. Only distasteful, unconventional methods like this can let us find a shortcut we need.”

“Fair enough,” Zorian said. Personally, he did not find blood magic to be that creepy, and even

viewed it as a potentially useful tool for usage outside the time loop, but he understood where Zach

was coming from.

They spent two more hours discussing various ideas before they both entered the pocket dimension

inside the imperial orb for a very important task.

They had to convince Princess to let Zorian examine how her mind worked without trying to bite his

head off for his insolence.

It would prove to be a very challenging task.

- break -

As days went by, some curious things began to be noticed by various countries of Koth, Xlotic and

Altazia. The first one was that House Taramatula suddenly organized and launched a major

expedition to Blantyrre in order to find the fabled imperial staff of Ikosia, sinking a massive amount of

money and manpower into the endeavor. The level of support House Taramatula had given to the

project was not as extensive as Daimen had hoped, but it was still major by virtually any means, and

the frantic speed with which the whole thing was organized and executed was enough to give others

pause. The Taramatula seemed almost desperate to track down the staff, and nobody could figure

out why. The leadership of the House declined to answer any questions regarding the matter,

contributing to the air of mystery.

More importantly, the Taramatula displayed the ability to open cross-continental dimensional

passages between their land and their base in Blantyrre. This was not something Zach and Zorian

wanted to make known, but proved to be utterly impossible to hide, given the scale of the operation.

This information soon spread around like a wildfire throughout various spy agencies, especially ones

based in Koth, who were immediately consumed by an intense desire to know everything possible

about the situation. Amusingly, this included trying to track down information about the imperial staff.

They thought the imperial artifacts were just historical curiosities, but since the Taramatula wanted

the staff so badly, there had to be something special about it. Many people suddenly wanted to get

their hands on the imperial staff, or at least hoped to understand what sort of power their rivals would

possess should they successfully claim the item.

Zach and Zorian intended to steal the results of all such research near the end of the restart. Who

knows, maybe the combined might of all these spy agencies would find something they had

overlooked.

The second thing that got people’s attention, especially in Altazia, was intricate spell formula

schematics, alchemical recipes, new spell compendiums and sensitive spy reports that started to

surface all over the continent. Nobody knew who was responsible for this, how they had come up

with all this in complete secrecy, or what their motives were… and it was completely unknown just

how many people had received this assistance, considering many people had simply accepted their

‘gifts’ quietly and set out to exploit them in secret. Finally, the gifts seemed to be most heavily

concentrated in Eldemar, which was a huge concern for everyone around them. This caused a

frenzy of speculation and activity across the continent, as people tried to figure out what this meant

and how to hopefully take advantage of it.

This was, of course, done by Zach and Zorian. They did it for a very simple reason: to muddy the

waters and prevent their newly marked fellow time travelers from standing out too much. It was too

much to expect all of them to behave themselves at all times or never make a blunder, especially in

this first restart while they were still under heavy impression of their first repeat of the month.

Introducing enough waves into their surroundings would hopefully keep most people too busy with

other matters to pay attention to crazy stories of time traveling academy professors and the like.

Thus far, the idea seemed to be working, but it would remain to be seen if that would hold out until

the end.

This done, Zach and Zorian turned their attention to organizing the search for the imperial staff in

Blantyrre. While the bulk of the job was done by Daimen and his men, it was a necessity for Zach

and Zorian to get regularly involved. For one thing, the descriptions of the imperial staff were vague

and contradictory, so they were the only ones that could identify the staff with any degree of

certainty, thanks to their ability to sense the presence of the Key. Additionally, they were necessary

for transporting people and supplies all over Blantyrre, since they were the only ones that could

easily open dimensional gates from one location to another.

Zorian had been quietly hoping that the immense amount of resources they had mobilized in the

search would provide quick results, but his hopes were soon dashed upon the rocks of reality.

Finding the staff turned out to be much, much harder than finding a Bakora Gate. The gates were

rare and obscure, but fairly distinctive. The staff, on the other hand, was something incredibly

common in Blantyrre. The lizardmen loved their staves – they were a popular symbol of authority,

and virtually any lizardman ruler and priest had a staff to call their own. While this meant that the

imperial staff probably hadn’t been thrown away and forgotten in some ancient treasury, it also

meant that tracking it down was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. The one saving grace

was that the imperial staff was free of most decorations, being just a plain piece of dark wood,

whereas the lizardmen liked to decorate their own staves with gems and feathers and whatnot. Then

again, what was to stop the new owner from adding those things to the imperial staff to pretty it up?

Ugh…

Influenced by such things, Zach and Zorian decided to approach Quatach-Ichl for lessons again.

Originally they wondered if they should skip their interaction with him in this particular restart, due to

all the new time loopers suddenly walking around, but in the end they decided they would risk it. This

time, the topic they chose was tracking magic and search spells. This was a relatively safe topic to

ask about, and it might help them find the staff faster. A foolish hope, probably, considering the staff

was immune to normal divination, just like all the other imperial artifacts. However, Quatach-Ichl was

familiar with divine energies in a way that others couldn’t match, so perhaps he knew of a way it

could be done.

The topic was also potentially useful in tracking down Red Robe once they were outside the time

loop, and it might give them an answer about how Quatach-Ichl had managed to detect their

presence at the end of the previous restart. Zorian really wanted an answer to that last question,

since he had thought his privacy wards were pretty much flawless at this point.

It was really unfortunate that he had been unable to find out anything of worth when he broke

through Quatach-Ichl’s mental defenses, Zorian thought gloomily. While he was extremely proficient

at performing memory probes by now, that type of magic took a long time to really get going and the

ancient lich had given him very little time to work with before abandoning his body. He probably

shouldn’t have tried to find out where Quatach-Ichl’s phylactery was located. That kind of information

was incredibly important and was thus bound to be guarded with the greatest possible zeal. He

should have gone for something fairly mundane. Maybe Quatach-Ichl would have been willing to risk

things and spend more time struggling against his mental probe.

At the moment, though, Zach and Zorian were in the time magic research facility beneath Cyoria.

The two of them were disguised as adult agents of the crown, and were having a private talk with

Krantin Keklos, the head researcher and overseer of the facility.

Krantin was slowly turning the imperial orb in his hands, utterly fascinated with it.

“You understand that we require your complete silence about this matter, don’t you, Mister Keklos?”

Zorian asked him.

The man suddenly looked up, a slightly confused look on his face. He had evidently been so

absorbed in his study of the orb that he had lost track of time.

“Hm? Oh. Oh yes, I absolutely understand the need for secrecy,” Krantin quickly said, nodding

furiously. “I assure you, me and my team are quite used to working on top secret projects and

dealing with potential leaks.”

He took another long look at the orb in his hands.

“This thing… it’s absolutely amazing,” he said, obvious admiration in his voice. “I cannot put into

words how glad I am to be given this honor.”

“I hope you remember you are not being given this orb just to satisfy your personal curiosity,” Zach

said gruffly. He was playing the bad guy in their ‘fake royal agent’ scheme. “We have given you this

honor because you are our nation’s foremost expert on Black Rooms, and we hope you can turn this

pocket dimension into the largest one yet. Can you do it or not?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Krantin said. “While the volume of space inside is larger than anything we have

ever done, the isolation from the outside world is also unprecedented. We can definitely turn this into

a temporal dilation zone. Just…”

“Just?” Zorian prompted.

“W-Well, this is a very ambitious undertaking you are proposing here,” Krantin said, stumbling over

the words slightly. Zorian could feel that, although Krantin was a little nervous, he was also

determined to make the absolute most out of this opportunity he was presented with. “To create this

thing you are proposing, we would have to considerably expand the research facility and design

whole new methods of Black Room construction. While I am sure we can do it eventually, the amount

of time involved is not small. We are a very small team and–”

“You want more money,” Zach said bluntly, cutting him off.

“And people,” Krantin nodded.

He seemed to sense this was important to them. In that case, he felt it was entirely appropriate to

ask for increased commitment in terms of resources and available staff.

Zorian did not answer verbally. He just reached into his jacket and handed Krantin a promissory note

from one of the local banks. He could have brought actual cash too, of course, but he knew by now

that government facilities like this rarely dealt with such things and that dumping large stacks of

paper money on them would be a huge mistake. It would raise all sorts of red flags in their heads.

Krantin wordlessly accepted the promissory note and glanced at it. He raised his eyebrow at the

number printed on it. Zorian could tell he was appreciative, but not really impressed.

“This is just the initial sum to get you started, of course,” Zorian said. “You will get further funding

once things actually start moving forward, as well as additional bonuses if the project is going

particularly well.”

“Of course,” Krantin said, slightly more impressed.

“In regards to additional staff, that is a bit more complex,” Zorian said. “Due to the somewhat abrupt

nature of this initiative, it will take at least a month before we can send some new people here on a

permanent basis.”

“That’s fine,” Krantin said easily. “I can wait a month or several. Just be aware that the longer it takes

for additional manpower to arrive, the more the project will stall.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Although we cannot send people here officially,

you will get several mages skilled in dimensionalism to help you move faster with the project.”

Specifically, the man would be getting Xvim, Silverlake, Zach and Zorian. With their expertise in

dimensionalism and with the research facility staff’s experience in constructing Black Rooms, the

project would hopefully result in something useful after a few restarts.

Krantin didn’t seem to like the idea, however.

“I don’t like experts outside my authority coming here, telling me how to run things,” he told them

bluntly. “Even if they’re highly capable, they don’t know the wider context of why we do things the

way we do. They would just slow things down and create confusion.”

“Are you the facility overseer or not?” Zach challenged. “Are you telling me that you cannot keep a

couple of new arrivals in line or bring them up to speed in a timely manner?”

Krantin frowned at him, giving him a slightly angry look.

“These people are being sent here as help,” Zorian said in a conciliatory tone. “If, after talking to

them, you feel they contribute nothing of worth to the project, you are free to send them away.”

“Just remember that their help has already been factored into our projections on how long the project

will take,” Zach warned.

“Very well,” Krantin said, a little unhappily. “I shall give these people a chance, at least. We will see if

they are as good as you say they are.”

It took them another hour to arrange everything. Zach and Zorian handed Krantin a whole stack of

‘official’ documentation, which the man merely glanced at before handing it over to the rest of his

staff. He evidently didn’t even consider the idea that this was all just an elaborate ruse. Zorian hoped

the people actually in charge of processing the documentation would be every bit as careless as

their overseer, because many of the documents wouldn’t stand up to detailed scrutiny.

“Well,” Krantin eventually breathed out. “This has certainly been a productive evening. Was there

anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“Actually, yes,” Zorian nodded, handing the man another folder full of documents. “There’s been a

change in regards to the group that is planned to take advantage of the next Black Room period.”

This wasn’t how Zach and Zorian usually took over the Black Room beneath Cyoria when they

wanted to use it. Normally they just disabled the true group and then showed up with bogus

documents at the last possible moment, giving the facility staff little time to consider the issue. This

time, however, they planned to bring an entire group with them. Thus, they had taken time to

arrange things a little more thoroughly.

“Oh? The Retin’s group decided to cancel their scheduled Black Room use?” Krantin said, skimming

through the folder. “Strange, they were all so enthusiastic about the whole thing…”

He gave them a knowing look. He clearly knew there was some foul play involved here, but he

probably thought it was the government bullying a group into dropping their claim rather than some

kind of deception.

He shook his head sadly, throwing the folder to the side.

“I’m curious,” he said. “This orb, the sudden changes in resource allocations and the like… are they

related to these mysterious ‘gifts’ I keep hearing about through the rumor mill?”

Hah.

“We aren’t paid to ask those kind of questions, and neither are you,” Zach told him grimly.

“But probably,” added Zorian.

Zach gave him a warning look in response. He was a pretty good actor, all things considered. Did he

used to do this sort of thing a lot during past restarts or was he just a natural?

“Alright, I understand. Forget I asked,” Krantin said, rising from his seat. “I guess we should both get

back to our jobs. When can I expect these ‘experts’ of yours?”

“Three days from now,” Zorian said. That should be enough to see if their ruse worked or not. “We

will also periodically drop by to check your progress and see if you need anything.”

“Give me sufficient resources and I’ll give you what you want,” Krantin assured them.

Zorian had no doubt about that. The real question was whether the results would come fast enough

to be of any use.

He also swore mentally that if Krantin really produced impressive results with what they’ve given

him, he would find a way to reward him for it in the real world.

Somehow.

- break -

In a typical restart, Zach and Zorian had a habit of holding meetings in all sorts of different places:

parks, taverns, abandoned houses, houses under construction, tiny caves in the middle of the

wilderness... they usually made a choice based on pure impulse and convenience. The novelty of

holding a meeting in a new location was also a welcome reprieve from the soul-

crushing sameness that dominated the time loop.

Now, however, they had a lot more people participating in these kinds of meetings. This completely

changed their usual dynamic. They couldn’t decide these kinds of things on a whim anymore – they

now had to find a space big enough to hold all of them in relative comfort and make sure everyone

could gather there in a timely manner. Public places were pretty much out of consideration – a group

of a dozen people of a variety of ages and occupations, plus some giant spiders, would turn heads

wherever they went. Additionally, Ilsa got angry at them when they tried to arrange for a meeting in a

cold, damp cave in the middle of uninhabited wilderness. Zorian didn’t understand what the big deal

was, the centipede that tried to climb up her leg was less than a finger thick and the bats didn’t

bother anyone, but afterwards everyone agreed to only hold meetings in actual buildings.

Thus, the two of them eventually decided to just hold all the meetings at the Noveda Estate. The

place had plenty of empty, spacious rooms and very good privacy wards already in place. Though

Zach complained that was the boring choice, he agreed with Zorian that organizing meetings

elsewhere was more trouble than it was worth.

Thus, at this moment, there was a huge group of people gathered in one of the larger meeting rooms

in the Noveda Estate. The actual meeting was already over by this point, but the group had not

disbanded for the day. Instead they had mostly broken up into smaller groups that discussed things

of mutual interest between themselves.

In one corner, the emissary from the Filigree Sages was having a loud and enthusiastic discussion

with Nora Boole. The female spell formula teacher did not seem to mind that she was talking to a

giant spider and instead relished the chance to discuss her field of study with a kindred soul. The

Filigree Sages emissary, meanwhile, seemed immensely pleased to have found a human mage that

was interested in their brand of spell formula. The two of them seemed completely oblivious to their

surroundings and the passage of time, so consumed they were in their discussion.

Not far from them, Alanic and Kyron had covered a table full of various maps and were staring at it in

silence. Every once in a while they would point at a random spot on the map and speak a few curt

words at each other before falling silent again. Zorian couldn’t figure out anything from their brief,

mysterious exchanges. In all likelihood, neither could anyone else – everyone seemed to be giving

them a wide berth.

In the other corner, Zach was having a loud discussion with the emissary from the Luminous

Advocates. This one was less friendly than the one between Nora Boole and the Filigree Sages

emissary, though. Zach seemed to be trying to convince the Luminous Advocates to tutor him in

mind magic, while the emissary was stubbornly pointing out that Zach wasn’t psychic and that this

would be a waste of time.

Zorian suspected Zach would get his way in the end. Luminous Advocates were a lot less prideful

with them after experiencing the time loop in person, and they now knew exactly how powerful Zach

was. They knew they couldn’t afford to piss him off, and Zach was unlikely to quit once he set his

mind on something, so they would probably cave in eventually. Whether anything would come out of

such a lesson was something Zorian was a lot less sure about.

Not too far from them, a small group consisting of Kael, Taiven, Lukav and Daimen was sorting

through the various rare materials Zach and Zorian gathered and exchanging stories. The talk

seemed to be pretty mundane, focusing on amusing anecdotes and such.

One of the tables was completely monopolized by Silverlake, poring over their documents related to

their study of the Ibasan gate. Zorian was pretty surprised at her behavior in this restart, in all

honesty. She seemed far more enthusiastic and open about helping them now. It was interesting

how dramatically she changed once she experienced the time loop with her own eyes.

Finally, there was Zorian. Like Silverlake, he wasn’t really interacting with anyone at the moment.

Instead, he was inspecting a table full of divine artifacts that they had stolen for study. He had never

made any progress in figuring out these things, but he certainly wasn’t about to give up. Especially

since Quatach-Ichl had given them definite confirmation that it was possible to at least detect divine

energies with regular magic.

Eventually his solitude was broken by Xvim, who walked up to his table and sat down on the chair

next to him. He looked faintly displeased.

“Problems?” Zorian asked.

“I have a newfound appreciation for the amount of patience you and Mister Noveda possess,” he

said blandly. “I’ve just spent the entire morning marking down a stack of student homework that was

absolutely identical to what I had already done in the previous restart and realized this would happen

a lot. An unpleasant realization.”

“Hah,” Zorian said. “You can always just ignore it.”

Xvim shook his head.

“That would go against my professional pride,” he said. “Just as I demand dedication from my

students, I demand the same from myself. A little thing like this should not break me. I shall treat it

as personal tempering, I suppose.”

“I see,” Zorian said, nodding. “I suppose you’d be quite a hypocrite if, after subjecting your students

to such an infuriating initial treatment, you ended up losing your patience after only a handful of

repeating months.”

Xvim hummed in response, not giving a verbal response. He glanced at the divine artifacts Zorian

was inspecting.

“You realize, I’m sure, that no one has ever managed to figure out how divine artifacts actually

work?” Xvim asked.

“Of course,” Zorian said. “But very few people had the opportunity to take one apart over and over

again as a method of study.”

“Still, I’m surprised you’re wasting time on this,” Xvim remarked. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to spend more

time on time loop related things?”

“I would actually classify this as very much a time loop related thing,” Zorian answered. “The time

loop clearly works at least partially with the help of divine energies. Who’s to say they aren’t involved

with our markers?”

“Oh?” Xvim asked, suddenly more interested.

“It’s just baseless speculation,” Zorian said. “But I’ve been thinking about what Red Robe could

possibly have that other past Controllers didn’t that would allow him to break the limitations placed

on temporary markers, and the most likely answer I’ve come up with is… Quatach-Ichl. I suspect

divine energies are involved with the marker somehow, and that the reason Red Robe had been

able to alter it is because he had Quatach-Ichl’s help. His method of perceiving and possibly

modifying divine energies may have allowed him to tamper with the marker in ways that are

impossible to us… in which case our efforts to understand and modify the marker are doomed to fail

right from the very start.”

“I hope you are not right about that,” Xvim said after a short pause. “Quatach-Ichl has been alive for

centuries. Who knows how long it took him to develop such capabilities?”

Zorian had nothing to say to that.

Chapter 088

Mysterious Ways

With the palace orb handed to the time magic researchers for study and experimentation, Princess

had temporarily lost her home. They weren’t going to leave her in there while the researchers

tinkered with the pocket dimension. That would probably end in tragedy, and they still needed her to

intimidate the sulrothum tribes into allying with them, anyway.

Although Princess herself was not particularly heartbroken about being away from the orb, the

situation did make moving her around a bit of a chore. She couldn’t live in the desert. While she

could tolerate dry areas, she needed plenty of water to rest in. Thus, Zach and Zorian mostly kept

her deep in the Kothic wilderness, where she was happily terrorizing the jungle wildlife, and used

dimensional portals to move her where they needed her. Thankfully, while Princess was huge, she

was also serpentine in build and very flexible. She could squeeze herself through surprisingly small

openings. However, this still meant Zach and Zorian had to expand their dimensional gates to far

greater sizes than they typically used, greatly increasing casting time and mana costs involved.

Princess did have her own, divinely-granted teleportation abilities. They had experimented with them

somewhat, trying to see if the hydra had underutilized her gifts somehow, but they were

disappointed in the end. Her teleportation powers were exactly what they appeared to be: a short-

ranged teleport ability that Princess could use for entering and leaving the palace orb, as well as

tactical positioning during battles. It was incapable of transporting her across large distances.

The logistics of hydra transport aside, their alliance building was moving along extremely well. The

sulrothum tribes they were visiting were both less secure and less prosperous than the ziggurat

tribe. Their settlements had no defensive wards, they had no guardian beast on the level of the

divinely-touched sandworm and their equipment was far shoddier than what Zach and Zorian were

used to. Thus, when a pair of powerful human mages came to them, riding on a gigantic eight-

headed hydra and handing out gifts, none of them dared to simply snub them. Not all of them were

eager to work with them, but all of them at least agreed to hear them out.

It helped that this time they had brought an actual sulrothum language specialist to translate for

them. The bearded, middle-aged man had only agreed to work with them after Zach and Zorian used

Neolu and her family connections to guarantee their trustworthiness, but he had been worth the

trouble. Not only was he proficient in the hand language that sulrothum normally used for their

communication with humans, he even understood some of their native clicking and buzzing that they

used to talk to each other… though he couldn’t actually speak it, of course.

Curiously, the man was completely non-magical. Ibak, as he was called, claimed that spells were of

little help to him in his job. They only put the sulrothum on edge, as many of them were wary of

talking to mages. The devil wasps had great difficulty distinguishing spell chants from mundane

conversations, so any time a known spellcaster started speaking they would be viewed with great

suspicion.

At the moment, Zach, Zorian, Ibak and Princess were approaching another of the sulrothum tribes

for recruitment. This one was particularly underwhelming, however, and Zorian privately wondered if

they should even bother. The settlement was just a series of circular holes dug into a cliff, and

Zorian had seen enough of such places by now to estimate the number of sulrothum living there.

The tribe probably had less than a hundred members total. Since the group had done nothing to

mask their approach and Princess was very eye-catching, the sulrothum scouts had long since

spotted them and the entire tribe was a nervous hive of activity. This allowed Zorian to take a look at

the decorations and weapons the group was sporting, and he was not impressed with what he was

seeing.

“Why are all these tribes so much worse than the ziggurat one?” Zach asked out loud.

He probably did not expect an answer, but surprisingly Ibak had an answer.

“Because of the dungeon access,” Ibak said.

Zach and Zorian shot him curious looks, not really understanding.

“While humans like to build their cities on top of accessible dungeon layers, most other species do

not, as their less sophisticated magical expertise makes them less capable of dealing with creatures

crawling out of the Dungeon on the regular basis,” Ibak clarified. “The sulrothum living in the Ziggurat

of the Sun are an exception, probably because of the giant sandworm you mentioned. The creature

probably allowed them to reshape their local underground the same way human communities do,

letting them exploit the place in relative safety. The other tribes do not have that, and thus appear

underwhelming in comparison.”

“Huh,” Zach said thoughtfully. “I guess that sandworm is even more important than we thought. The

wasps really lucked out with that thing.”

Before anyone could continue the discussion, Princess released a warbling cry and pointed one of

her heads towards a spot on the horizon where a group of sulrothum was flying towards them.

Zorian frowned at the sight. He wasn’t surprised that Princess had noticed them before anyone else

– she had eight pairs of eyes and was intensely vigilant by nature – but the direction they were

coming from and their numbers were unexpected. They were coming from their left, rather than the

sulrothum settlement in front of them, and there were twelve sulrothum in the approaching group.

“An emissary from a different tribe?” Zorian guessed. He doubted the tiny settlement in front of them

would send out a hunting party as large as this… and if they did, the group would first enter their

home to consult with their elders before confronting them.

“Probably,” Zach said. “I hope this becomes a thing in the future. This would go so much smoother if

the surrounding tribes started coming to us instead of the other way around.”

As they grew closer to Princess and the humans accompanying her, the sulrothum group eventually

slowed down and landed in the area in front of them. The sulrothum chose a spot that was a fair

distance away from their own, trying to make their entrance seem less threatening, but in the end

they did effectively block their path and Princess instantly became outraged at the temerity of these

newcomers. If Zach hadn’t hurriedly calmed her down, she would have already been charging at

them, heads roaring a battle cry.

In the end the two groups silently agreed to meet in the middle and negotiate. Zach, Zorian and Ibak

ordered Princess to stay in the back and loom over the meeting threateningly, while the apparent

sulrothum leader took two bodyguards with him and ordered the rest to similarly stay in the back and

look intimidating.

Zorian was kind of biased, but he felt that Princess decidedly won the ‘aggressive posturing’

competition.

For the next ten minutes, Ibak and the sulrothum leader exchanged words while Zorian took the

chance to study the group that sought them out. They were pretty impressive by sulrothum

standards, he realized. They were all armed with iron spears and decorated with plenty of war paint,

trinkets and various ‘magical charms’. The only person that wasn’t armed was their leader, who

carried a plethora of metal rings and chains but no weapons. He also had a particularly large number

of charm bundles hanging off of him, some of which actually looked like they might be doing

something. Zorian immediately pegged him as a priest.

After a while the talking died down and Ibak turned to them awkwardly. Zorian could immediately tell

that he didn’t have good news for them, though the sulrothum themselves remained non-aggressive.

Curious.

“What is it?” Zach prompted.

“This group here comes from the Ziggurat of the Sun,” Ibak said slowly.

Oh.

He did think those spears were kind of familiar. However, weapons like that were hardly unique to

the ziggurat tribe, so he thought nothing of it.

“They know we want to attack them, huh?” Zach mused out loud.

It wasn’t that unexpected, Zorian supposed. It wasn’t like they were being low-key in their alliance

building. Quite the opposite, really. With that in mind, it was probably inevitable that the ziggurat tribe

would detect their plans long before the actual attack was executed. Since their goal was to lure the

high priest out of the ziggurat and not to catch the sulrothum by surprise, this wasn’t something they

cared much about.

Still, they hadn’t expected the ziggurat tribe to seek them out for a friendly chat. Try to ambush them,

maybe, but not this.

“Yes,” Ibak confirmed. “They want to know… what it would take for you to call your attack off.”

“What, no threats?” Zach asked curiously.

“No,” said Ibak, shaking his head. “Just questions about your motives. Not that I know much about

that myself, of course.”

Zach ignored the accusatory tone in Ibak’s last sentence. While he probably wouldn’t betray them to

the sulrothum, it wouldn’t make them look any less crazy or mysterious if they told him they were

doing all this for a magic ring.

“How do they know we don’t want to simply take away their ziggurat?” Zach asked. “Ask them that.”

“That’s… are you trying to start a fight with them?” Ibak asked incredulously.

“I want to see how they react,” Zach said. “Just do it.”

Ibak muttered something that sounded like a curse in his native language and then started

conversing with the sulrothum priest again. Interestingly, the sulrothum did not visibly react to the

question at all. It wasn’t long before Ibak turned to them again.

“They say three of us are not enough for that,” Ibak said. “That you would have brought an army with

you if you wanted to occupy something.” The sulrothum priest made another series of hand

gestures. “They think you want something smaller. Something portable. They acknowledge your

strength but wonder if a trade wouldn’t be preferable to bloodshed.”

“What we want they would never trade away,” Zorian said, shaking his head.

Should they tell them they were after the ring? No, that might make it harder to lure the high priest

out of the ziggurat later… but maybe he would actually agree to hand it to them if he thought it would

ward off a catastrophic attack on his tribe? The ring was important, but it wasn’t like they were

asking him to hand over the sandworm control dagger or something.

“Tell them this is not something they are qualified to negotiate about,” Zach suddenly said. “We want

to talk to their high priest.”

Zorian raised his eyebrow at Zach. Did he really think it would be that easy?

A furious exchange of hand gestures occurred between Ibak and the sulrothum priest, after which

Ibak turned to them again.

“They say they are also not qualified to bring strangers before their elders,” Ibak said. “They are here

merely to find out what you’re after and if the conflict can be averted. After that, they will report back

to their tribe and receive further orders. They say meeting the leaders of the tribe may be possible,

but you have to give them something to bring back if you wish for that to happen.”

Zach and Zorian looked at each other briefly. A quiet exchange of telepathic communication

occurred between them and they quickly came to an agreement.

“I guess that makes sense,” Zach admitted out loud.

Zorian reached into his pocket and retrieved a metal watch from it. Using a quick alteration spell, he

melted the portion of the casing and shaped it into a replica of the imperial ring before handing it

over to Ibak.

“Tell them to hand this over to the high priest as our response,” Zorian said.

“He’ll understand,” Zach added.

Ibak raised his eyebrow at them but did as he was told. The sulrothum priest hesitantly accepted the

ring, turning it in his chitinous hands. He seemed rather dubious about the explanation he was given,

staring at both Zach and Zorian with his large faceted eyes in a searching manner, antennae

nervously twitching in all directions.

After a while, he carefully placed the replica ring in one of the many leather pouches hanging off his

body and nodded to them in a very human manner. He then waved towards his bodyguards,

signaling they were done here. Apparently he realized this was all he would be getting out of them. A

few minutes later the entire sulrothum group lifted into the air again and rapidly flew away in the

same direction they came from.

The humans silently watched their retreat for a while, before Ibak decided to speak up.

“You brats are too damn mysterious about everything,” he groused. “I don’t even know why I agreed

to this.”

“You’re getting paid handsomely for this,” Zach pointed out.

“Yet I’m still starting to regret this,” Ibak said. He looked towards the sulrothum settlement in the

distance. “Incidentally, there is another group of sulrothum incoming. This time from the settlement

we were going to visit before we got interrupted by this one.”

Zorian looked towards the settlement and noticed that Ibak was correct. The local sulrothum did not

dare interrupt the ziggurat tribe emissaries while they were talking to Zorian and others, but now that

they were gone, they seemed to be hurriedly assembling their own emissary group to intercept them.

“Are we still going to talk to them about allying against the ziggurat tribe?” Ibak asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Zach said, shrugging. “There is no guarantee that the high priest will accept

our message in good grace. If we thought it would be that simple to get what we want, we wouldn’t

have started down this path to begin with. We’ll keep gathering forces, putting pressure on him while

he considers what to do.”

- break -

Neither Zach nor Zorian really thought the high priest would capitulate and hand them the ring

without a fight. On the contrary, they felt sure it would make their task of eventually obtaining the ring

far harder in this restart. However, on the off chance it did work, it would be pretty much an ideal

solution to obtaining the ring in future restarts. Thus, they decided to give it a try anyway.

They didn’t expect to be approached by the same emissary group the very next day, inviting them to

the ziggurat to talk with the high priest.

Ibak cautioned them against accepting the offer. It was an obvious trap, he said. However, Zach and

Zorian did not care. Even if the meeting was just an excuse to ambush them, they still had to go.

They were far more powerful than either Ibak or the sulrothum high priest realized, and were unlikely

to die. As long as they met the high priest face-to-face and he had the ring on him, they would get

what they wanted, one way or another.

Unfortunately, Ibak adamantly refused to follow them into the ziggurat, calling them suicidal fools.

Zorian understood the man’s attitude. Ibak couldn’t possibly know just how capable he and Zach

really were, so his concerns were well warranted. However, this didn’t make things any less

frustrating and the argument was rapidly becoming heated.

The ziggurat tribe emissary calmly observed the argument for a few minutes before casting some

sort of spell. Both Zach and Zorian instantly became wary, but it quickly became obvious that the

sulrothum priest was casting magic on himself.

The spell was far lengthier and ritualized than what Zorian was used to when dealing with human

and aranean mages, involving nearly a minute of buzzing and gesturing, and at the end of it the

sulrothum priest burned a handful of scented materials as some kind of offering to the heavens. An

entirely superfluous gesture as far as Zorian could tell, not impacting the spellcasting results at all.

This done, the emissary straightened himself up and faced them again.

“The fight: unnecessary,” he declared with a somewhat distorted but perfectly understandable

human voice. “Talk: still possible. No need to pressure companion.”

Zach and Zorian stared at the sulrothum for a while before Zach spoke up again.

“You could have done this right from the start and you let us talk through a translator all this time?”

he asked.

The sulrothum’s antenna twitched nervously as he tried to decipher Zach’s words.

“He clearly has only a rudimentary knowledge of Ikosian tongue,” Ibak said in an exasperated

manner. “It makes perfect sense for him to prefer conversing with me, using more familiar hand

gestures, than bothering with this.”

“My speech: poor,” the emissary added. “High priest: much better. Will be enough until we reach

temple.”

After some more discussion, Zach and Zorian agreed to leave Ibak and followed the sulrothum back

to the ziggurat. Despite their worries, they were not attacked at any point in the journey, not even

when they entered the ziggurat itself. Instead the emissary dutifully led them through the empty

corridors and straight into the temple, where the high priest and his honor guard waited for them.

Zorian was honestly a little surprised. The sulrothum had actually brought them in front of their high

priest, just as they had promised. Sure, the room was also packed full of heavily-armed guards and

several lesser priests, but it did not seem like they were walking into an ambush. The sulrothum

were tense and agitated, but they did not move to attack them.

The high priest stood proudly in front of the huge sacred fire that served as the heart of the temple.

Situated at the top of a large stone dais, the fire illuminated the entire place in a dull orange glow.

The air was uncomfortably hot and dry, even though Zach and Zorian had spent their time traveling

through a scorching desert just before coming here. From his elevated position, the sulrothum high

priest silently stared down on them, his multifaceted eyes unblinkingly studying their every move.

A deathly, uncomfortable silence soon descended on the scene. For several minutes, the two sides

simply stood in their spots without making a move. Even Zach remained patient and unmoving,

reluctant to make the first move.

Finally, the high priest seemed to reach a decision. He reached towards one of his hands and

removed a familiar ring from it. He then placed in on his palm and thrust it towards them decisively.

“Take it,” he said. His voice was deep and resonant, and echoed dramatically throughout the room.

“Just like that?” Zach asked curiously.

“You do not want it?” the high priest asked.

“We want it,” Zach said. “I’m just a little surprised by your behavior.”

“I mirror your sentiments, human,” the high priest declared. “I, too, am… a little surprised by your

behavior. If you wanted the ring, why did you not just come here and ask for it? Why bother with the

hostilities?”

Zach looked at him like he was stupid.

“What are you talking about?” Zorian said. “Are you saying you’d have given us the ring if we had

simply walked in here and asked you to?”

“Of course,” the high priest said. “We are children of angels. What child dares defy its parents?”

“The angels?” repeated Zorian confusingly.

The high priest stared at them silently for a few seconds.

“As I thought,” he said, lowering the hand that held the ring. “You do not know.”

“No, we really don’t,” Zach freely admitted. “What are you talking about?”

“Have you tried to contact the angels recently?” the high priest asked.

Zorian raised an eyebrow at him. What a ridiculous idea. As if anyone could just contact the angels

to have a friendly chat of something. Besides…

“The spirit world cannot be contacted at the moment,” Zorian said.

“Ah, so you do know that much at least…” the high priest said, his antennae waving in the air lazily.

“Good. Just before the angels fell silent, they graced us with their presence and gave us a warning.

They said that in the coming month, a powerful human mage may arrive here and ask for the ring. If

that were to happen… we are to simply hand it over without struggle.”

Zach and Zorian stayed silent, digesting the explanation. Angels specifically instructed the sulrothum

to hand over the ring to them? Well, to the time loop controller, really. To Zach. Did that mean that

angels were the ones to give Zach the marker?

It would certainly explain how Zach could have gotten a divine blessing when such things were

supposed to be all but extinct in modern times…

“Why would the angels tell you to do such a thing?” Zach frowned.

“I don’t know,” the high priest said, cocking his head to the side like a curious bird. “You should tell

me.”

“Well, did they actually give you a description of this ‘powerful human mage’?” Zach asked

agitatedly. “Did they leave some kind of message for him?”

“No descriptions, no message,” the high priest responded curtly. “However, they did assure us not to

worry about the loss of the ring. They said… that in the end, the loss would be just a temporary

matter.”

Before Zach and Zorian could say anything else, the high priest threw the ring at them. Zach caught

it in his hand and inspected it. However, that was largely pointless. Zorian could tell through his

marker that the ring was genuine, and so could Zach.

“The heavens instruct; the children obey,” the high priest stated. “You have what you came here for.

You may leave now.”

This was apparently the end of the meeting, because then the regular priests soon came to them,

and politely but insistently ushered them out of the ziggurat.

- break -

Somewhere in the jungles of Blantyrre, not far from the coast, was an unremarkable dirt trail made

by the local lizardmen. This was normally a quiet and rarely used road, but today this sleepy peace

was shattered by an entire group of humans loudly and messily trudging through the region. Though

sheer manpower and powerful magic, they cut down the vegetation that threatened to overgrow the

path and continued inexorably towards their destination.

This was Daimen and his personal team looking for rumors about the imperial staff. This time, Zach

and Zorian had decided to tag along with them for a while. It had been four days since they had

managed to obtain the imperial ring from the sulrothum, and they were still somewhat under the

impression of what they had heard in the ziggurat. They didn’t know what to think about the whole

incident. Clearly the angels were aware that the time loop was going to be activated and took at

least some precautions in regards to that… did that mean they were behind the whole thing?

Zach certainly did not remember even talking to an angel, much less receiving any sort of

instructions from them. Of course, it was possible that Red Robe was responsible for that, having

erased Zach’s memory of that for some reason, but then one couldn’t help but ask why they didn’t

plan for that possibility and leave a message for him through one of their other servants. The ring

situation proved they were both capable and willing to make such contingencies when it suited them,

so why not for other things as well?

There were no easy answers for that. Even Alanic admitted that this sort of thing did not make much

sense to him, though he did not seem to be too disturbed. The angels work in mysterious ways, he

said, since they labor under many limitations and restrictions placed on them by the gods. Many

times they simply couldn’t do the logical thing, or even tell you why they are acting the way they do.

One just had to have faith that they knew what they were doing and not rely on them too much.

Well, at least this way they had a trivially easy way of recovering the imperial ring…

“See, I told you Princess was the solution!” Zach said, spinning the imperial ring on his finger.

“This is not how you expected things to go and we both know it,” Zorian told him firmly. He looked

over to the side where Kirma was fiddling with the brand new divination compass Zorian had made

for her. “So? What do you think?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, opting to instead cast a quick series of divinations through the

device before turning it in her hands a few more times. Like her old one, it was flower-shaped and

made of metal, but with a much denser array of spell formula. Zorian was pretty sure his work was a

massive improvement on what she had been working with up until now, but high level diviners were

finicky and what worked for him might not necessarily work for her.

“Very impressive,” she finally concluded. “A bit bigger and heavier than I’m used to, but I can work

with this. It feels a little weird to accept something this valuable for free, though.”

“Free?” Torun scoffed from their side. One of the floating eyeballs that followed him swiveled

towards them while Torun simply kept scanning the jungle canopy for something. He had a bad habit

of not looking people in the eye while talking to them, letting his floating eyeballs maintain eye

contact instead. “He’s had all of us searching an entire continent worth of jungle for a straightened

piece of wood without having to pay us a single thing. It was about time he started handing out gifts.”

“That’s not very fair,” Kirma protested. “We’re also doing this for ourselves, not just for him.”

“And I’m paying plenty of money to make this happen,” Zorian pointed out.

“Fake time loop money,” Torun said dismissively. “Doesn’t count.”

“Also, why don’t I get a gift?” Taiven suddenly asked, having snuck up to them from behind while

they were taking. “Seriously, Zorian… you’re handing out expensive gifts to strange women, but you

don’t have anything for your old pal Taiven? Shame on you!”

Zorian looked at her, amused. He’d thought she was still busy gawking at the jungle sights, since

this was the first time she had ever stepped foot in one, but apparently she had calmed down a little

and decided to seek him out.

Kirma gave Taiven a less friendly look, since she apparently didn’t like being labeled a ‘strange

woman’ out of the blue.

“My gift to you is taking you with me to Blantyrre, even though you have no useful skills for the

mission and no wilderness survival experience,” Zorian told her blandly.

“Eh, I guess that’s true,” she laughed nervously. “I really do appreciate it, though. Traveling to exotic

lands, searching for ancient artifacts… this sort of expedition is exactly what I hoped to one day

experience. It’s great! It’s just too bad I can’t put this on my job profile or something.”

She was entirely too giddy about the whole thing. On one hand it was kind of annoying to have her

dance around the whole group like an excited little girl, on the other hand it kind of made him glad he

had agreed to bring her along, since this clearly meant so much to her.

At least she wasn’t defenseless. The one time she had walked into a patch of carnivorous plants,

she burned them all to ashes before anyone had even realized what had happened. Her

inexperience aside, she was a decent combat mage.

Eventually, the group soon reached their destination – a small lizardmen village where they would

supposedly find a reclusive sage that knew ‘everything’ about the history of the region. While the

‘everything’ was almost certainly an exaggeration, there was probably some sort of basis for his

reputation, right?

Right.

The village was a humble one, with tiny houses made out of mud and straw. There was a river right

next to it, and most of the adult villagers were currently busy tending to their boats, which they

dragged onto the shore for easier handling. The children were either shuttling tools and materials

between various work groups or chasing each other and play fighting while their parents shouted

something vaguely threatening at them. Probably telling them to stop messing around or demanding

they get out of the way if they wouldn’t help.

Their arrival caused a small commotion in the group, but they were mostly curious rather than wary.

Most lizardmen never saw a human in their entire life, Zorian had learned, so they did not know what

to expect of them. Since the group was accompanied by lizardmen guides hired in the nearby city-

state and no one in the group carried an obvious weapon like a spear or a club, the villagers were

not particularly frightened of them.

Annoyingly, this meant that some of the braver children tried to examine them closer or even touch

them. One of them specifically picked Zorian as a target, probably because he was one of the

shorter humans present, and kept asking him something while poking him.

Lizardmen language sounded nothing like normal lizard hissing. It was more like a high-pitched,

warbling bird song. Zorian understood none of it, but by peering into the kids mind and listening to

the snickering explanation of their lizardmen guides, he managed to puzzle out that the child was

asking him if he was a ‘fairy’.

He hated this village already.

In any case, the group eventually set up a small camp just outside the village, with most of the group

just idling around while the leaders of the village exchanged gifts with Daimen and went through

various ceremonial gestures. The whole procedure was annoyingly lengthy, but apparently

necessary. The reclusive sage they wanted to talk with was normally… well, reclusive. He wouldn’t

deign to meet most people, but perhaps if they could convince the village elders to put in a good

word for them, he might give them a chance.

Zorian was currently sitting on one of the cut down logs on the outskirts of the village, watching

some of the lizardmen children fight the animated mud person he had created out of the ground to

distract them from himself. Although the mud construct had the size and strength comparable to an

adult human, the truth was that humans were notably smaller and weaker than lizardmen. Their

vaguely crocodilian frames were wider and larger than human ones, and their skin was covered in

tough leathery scales. Thus, even though the mud construct’s enemies were mere children, it was

still being gradually overpowered. This was pretty much how Zorian had intended it to be, however.

He didn’t really want to hurt the little brats, even if they were loud, grabby and generally annoying.

Not far from him, some enterprising lizardman woman had come to try and peddle her crafts and

trinkets to the gathered humans, trying to exchange pottery and necklaces made out of colorful

stones for metal tools and fabrics. She was currently ‘negotiating’ with one of the female members of

the group, each of them loudly talking at one another, even though neither spoke the other’s

language.

He took off his glasses and started obsessively cleaning them. Damn it, when was this damn

meeting going to en–

“Why so impatient?” asked a voice beside him. “It is good to sit down from time to time and

appreciate the simpler things in life.”

His heart skipped a beat when the voice started talking. He turned towards the source of the voice,

shocked to find that there was suddenly a strange lizardman sitting next to him. And he did mean

‘suddenly’. The lizardman did not register at all on Zorian’s mind sense and seemingly materialized

out of nowhere when he started talking.

He was also very, very weird-looking. An intricate pattern of blue and white lines was painted over

his whole body, and he wore what seemed to be a massive deer skull over the top of his head. A

multitude of bone armbands, necklaces and ankle-bands decorated his limbs and neck. Resting

horizontally on his lap was a gnarled wooden staff with a huge pearl attached on top of it.

His posture and appearance gave the impression of someone old and worn down – eyes half-

closed, scales cracked and faded in places, his posture hunched and drooping – despite that, he

inspired a faint feeling of terror in Zorian, who couldn’t understand how he had been able to sneak

up on him so easily.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” the lizardman said. He was speaking fluent Ikosian, which was

kind of interesting but way down the list of questions Zorian wanted answered at the moment.

“What? Oh, you’re the sage we wanted to speak with,” Zorian realized.

“Indeed,” the lizardman said, fiddling with one of the bone armbands while watching the children play

with Zorian’s mud construct. “I dislike this kind of attention, so I decided to just meet with one of you

and be done with it.”

Zorian looked around and realized no one seemed to be paying attention to his conversation with the

weird lizardman that had showed up out of nowhere.

“Only you can see and hear me,” he said casually.

This was such bullshit.

“Why did you pick me out of everyone else present?” Zorian asked with a small frown.

“I like you,” he said. “You took the time to play with the children. Don’t you remember what I said

earlier? It is good to sit down from time to time and appreciate the simpler things in life.”

Zorian looked at him incredulously, not sure if the lizardman was being serious or not. He had only

made that toy so the children would let him rest in peace.

“How did you sneak up on me?” Zorian couldn’t help but ask.

“I’m old,” the lizardman said, tapping the staff in his lap with his scaly, clawed fingers. “Ancient. It’s

natural to have a couple of secrets.”

He did not offer to explain any further and Zorian did not press him.

The staff was probably some kind of divine artifact. Zorian checked it out with his marker, just in

case it was the one they were after. It wasn’t.

“What did you seek me out for?” the lizardman asked, his half-closed eye focusing more firmly on

him.

Zorian quickly described the origin and probable appearance of the staff to the old lizardman. The

sage patiently listened to his explanation, saying nothing. He said nothing for nearly fifteen minutes,

seemingly lost in thought. Occasionally he whistled to himself softly in the native lizardmen tongue,

tapping on his various bone ornaments and drawing some kind of simple geometric diagrams in dirt.

Zorian patiently waited for the lizardman to come to his senses again, not daring to interrupt his

musings. Unfortunately, when the sage finally turned to him again, he did not have a favorable

answer for him.

“I cannot remember anything that would help you in your quest,” the lizardman said, shaking his

head sadly. The various bone necklaces hanging from his neck clinked softly at the movement.

Zorian sighed. So much for that.

“However…” the lizardman continued, “I have an idea where you might look for more knowledge on

the matter, if you feel brave enough. This staff… it is a very valuable thing, yes?”

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed.

“There is a particularly loathsome dragon mage terrorizing our people throughout the entire region

and beyond,” the sage said. “I don’t know her name, but our people refer to her as the Violet-Eyed

Disaster, The Covetous One or Typhoon. For centuries she has preyed upon our communities,

snatching away any item that catches her fancy and killing anyone that tried to bar her way. Many

important artifacts have been lost to her. If this staff of yours is as important as it seems, she has

probably tried to find it and knows a thing or two about its whereabouts. Perhaps… it may already be

in her possession.”

Zorian gave the lizardman an unamused look. An infamous dragon mage? There were few things in

the world more dangerous than that… feeling brave indeed.

Still, the old guy’s logic was sound and the idea was worth checking out. Didn’t Zach already

demonstrate the ability to kill Oganj, who was similarly an infamous dragon mage?

“So what do you–” Zorian began to speak, only to realize the old lizardman was no longer there.

He waved his hand through the air where the sage had been sitting next to him, but hit only empty

space.

Groaning audibly, Zorian wandered off to find Zach and Daimen to inform them that arranging the

meeting with the sage was no longer necessary.

- break -

Zorian woke up with a panicked scream as an endless deluge of ice cold water poured on top of his

head as he slept. Stumbling and flailing around in panic, he tried to jump out of bed, but the wet

fabric clung to him and made him trip. He tumbled awkwardly to the floor, frantically trying to rub the

water out of his eyes while searching for his glasses.

When he had finally come to his senses and looked around, he found Kirielle pressed into a corner

of the room by the door, a large bucket clutched tightly in her hands.

There was still water dripping from it onto the floor.

“Kirielle… what the hell are you doing!?” Zorian shouted incredulously.

“I, u-umm…” she stumbled, pacing nervously while clutching the bucket in her hands tightly. “I was

trying to make you assume your true form!”

Zorian looked at her like she was crazy.

Actually, scratch that – she was crazy!

“True form!?” he asked her. “What the hell are you on about? You just dumped a bucket of cold

water on my head in the middle of the night!”

“I read in the book that doppelgangers assume their true forms if you surprise them while they’re

sleeping,” she said. “So, um, if you dump water on them when they’re deep asleep, they’ll drop their

disguise and assume their true form.”

Zorian stared at her, unable to believe her explanation.

“You think I’m a face-changer?” Zorian asked her in a calm voice.

“Y-You aren’t acting like the Zorian I know,” she said while staring at the ground and refusing to look

at him. “You have all these friends all of a sudden, you didn’t get angry at all when Imaya asked you

about Daimen and… you’re way too nice to me.”

Zorian sighed and ran his hand through his wet hair to get it out of his eyes. He looked at the closed

door, confused as to why the entire house hadn’t woken up by now because of all the shouting, but

then he remembered he had put pretty strong privacy wards on the room.

“If you thought I was a doppelganger, you should have at least gotten someone to back you up when

confronting me,” Zorian told her.

He made a couple of gestures and pressed his hands against his chest, evaporating most of the

water out of his clothes.

“You’re too good at magic, too,” Kirielle added. “That’s another thing that’s weird. But, umm… you

didn’t change forms, so I guess you really are Zorian.”

Zorian debated the merits of using an illusion to seemingly morph into some kind of grotesque

monster right at that moment, but immediately discarded it as too cruel. As much as he wanted to

rage and get back at her, she had good reasons for pulling off this stupid stunt.

He was getting entirely too careless around her, it seemed.

“Yes, I really am Zorian,” he told her in an exasperated tone. He took the bucket from her hands and

lifted her up before marching back to his bed and plopping her right on top of it.

Right on top of the wet part, that is.

“Why!?” she protested, immediately jumping off the bed and inspecting her suddenly wet behind.

“Punishment,” Zorian said pitilessly. “You did say I was too nice to you, no?”

She gave him an angry look but said nothing.

“Anyway,” he said. “I suppose I can tell you a little bit about what’s going on and why things are so

weird right now…”

- break -

Time marched on. The search for the staff in Blantyrre, the research on pocket dimensions and other

points of interest, the training of people with the aid of Black Rooms and nigh-limitless resources…

as the restarts started to accumulate, these and other projects started to gradually bear fruit.

Just like that, another five restarts had passed.

Chapter 089

Victory

It was a peaceful summer day in the Great Northern Forest. The vegetation was vibrantly green and

thriving, colorful flowers covered the forest meadows, the songbirds were seemingly competing to

see which one of them was louder and shriller than the next, and strange insects were flying through

the air.

While the vast expanse of trees that covered the northern portion of the Altazian continent was

usually portrayed as a dark and foreboding place, crawling with dangerous monsters and hidden

dangers, the truth is that the area could be quite beautiful and breathtaking. One just had to be

strong enough to survive the challenges and travel the land unchecked.

Zorian, Taiven and Kael were definitely strong enough. Not just because Zorian was present in the

group, either. Taiven and Kael had gone through five whole loops by now, each of which included

additional time in the Black Rooms. They’d had nearly an entire year to improve their magic, backed

by nearly unlimited resources and top-tier tutors. Even Kael, who spent most of that time focusing on

alchemy, was now capable of at least defending himself from common threats. As for Taiven, she

was a combat magic specialist to begin with. Her power was probably equal to an average

professional combat mage at this point. She even had real combat experience, since she insisted on

fighting the Ibasan invaders at the end of every restart and often participated in minor battles that

Daimen’s team stumbled upon while exploring Blantyrre. Even if Zorian decided to stand back and

let the other two fend for themselves, there was very little in the forest around them that could

threaten them.

Currently, the three of them were resting on a large boulder in one of the forest clearings and playing

a game of cards. It was just something to pass the time while they rested their feet. They had been

wandering the forest for hours before stumbling upon the clearing, and it looked so perfect for a

temporary camp they decided to take a bit of a break. They didn’t intend to stay here for very long.

As Zorian pondered his next move, he felt Taiven ‘subtly’ try to take a peek at his cards with a spying

spell. Zorian was proud for her for expanding her horizons beyond flashy combat magic, but that

didn’t stop him from reflexively crushing her magic into nothingness before giving her a knowing

smile. She pouted for a moment, before remembering she was supposed to act like she didn’t know

anything and schooling her expression into one of indifference.

Kael silently observed the scene from the side before shaking his head in amusement, probably

guessing what had happened. Zorian suspected Taiven had tried to use the same trick on Kael as

well, though he had no idea if the morlock boy had managed to stop her, or even noticed her

cheating. Then again, Kael didn’t seem to take the card game very seriously. He seemed to be

playing mindlessly, uncaring of how likely he is to win. Zorian supposed this sort of attitude made

perfect sense, since this was supposed to be just a nice relaxing game with no stakes, but it faintly

annoyed him anyway.

Zorian himself didn’t try to cheat, of course. That would suck the joy out of the whole activity, since it

would be so trivial for him to succeed. He simply immersed himself in the game while listening to the

sounds of the wilderness around them. His legs throbbed in pain, unused to the level of activity he

was engaging in, but he had kind of gotten used to that by now. Even with the aid of potions and

mind magic, the beginning of every restart involved Zorian being in a constant state of dull pain

because he lived far more actively than he had before the time loop. Hopefully that wouldn’t have

any long-term mental effects on him once he was out of the time loop…

He was broken out of his thoughts by a loud crunching sound. Looking to the side, he saw Kael with

a large yellow root stuffed in his mouth.

Taiven gave Kael a strange, possibly disapproving look.

“What?” Kael complained, chewing loudly. The sound it produced reminded Zorian of someone

eating a raw carrot.

“How can you eat that thing?” she asked him.

“It’s really tasty,” he told her matter-of-factly.

“It’s a wild root you washed in a nearby river,” she protested. “That cannot possibly be safe or

hygienic. Plus, I can smell it from here and it doesn’t smell like something you should be eating…”

Kael gave her a challenging look before biting into the root again and chewing even louder.

Zorian pretended to study his cards while inwardly chuckling in amusement. Personally, he wasn’t

worried about Kael in the slightest. Although the morlock was the weakest of the three in terms of

combat strength, he was the person who was most at home in the forest. He had been working and

living in this very environment ever since he was a child, and doubtlessly knew exactly what was

safe to eat and how.

Taiven had gotten relatively close to Kael after they had both received a temporary marker, since the

two of them were arguably the closest in age and relative skill among the new loopers, so she

probably knew that too. Thus, she simply threw her hands in the air with a huff, accidentally showing

them a glimpse of the cards she was holding, and dropped the issue.

Zorian took note of her cards and changed his tactics accordingly. This wasn’t cheating, of course.

Taking advantage of your opponent’s mistakes was only natural. It wasn’t his problem that he could

memorize her entire hand flawlessly after seeing it for only a fraction of a second…

After another fifteen minutes of chatting, playing cards, eating roots and berries and lazing around,

the three of them reluctantly decided to move on. After all, this whole expedition originated from

Kael’s desire to search for rare alchemical ingredients in the depths of the Great Northern Forest.

This wasn’t really some critical task that had to be done, and the three of them were mostly using it

as an excuse to relax and socialize, but they did intend to seriously search for things Kael was after.

For the next half an hour or so, Zorian followed after Kael casting divination after divination and

occasionally taking over the minds of forest birds in order to scout the area around them. Taiven also

utilized divinations, having achieved some measure of expertise in the field over the various restarts,

while Kael mostly relied on his own two eyes. Considering his extensive experience in searching for

magical plants, however, he probably still saw and understood far more than Zorian and Taiven did.

Every once in a while the morlock boy would inspect some random stump or boulder, occasionally

picking up some other magical plant that wasn’t on their list, but which he apparently also considered

worthwhile, and occasionally just stared at them meaningfully while pondering some mysterious

issue. The backpacks the three of them wore had all been made by Zorian, and were considerably

larger on the inside than they appeared, but Zorian estimated Kael’s backpack was already starting

to get full from the various plants, jars full of worms and beetles, and even some colorful stones that

seemed pretty mundane to Zorian’s eyes. Even if they failed to find the things they were searching

for, Kael certainly intended to make the most out of this expedition, that’s for sure.

Relaxing times like these had become increasingly rare in these last five restarts. Everyone was

constantly busy with something, whether it was following some plan, searching for things that could

help them, experimenting with exotic magics or simply training their skills. This was especially true in

this particular restart, since this was the last restart for the temporary loopers. If they could not figure

out a way to modify the temporary markers before the end of the restart, they would lose…

well, everything.

Sure enough, eventually Kael and Taiven could not help but bring up the issue that was constantly in

the back of everyone’s mind these days.

“This is the end, isn’t it?” Kael suddenly said.

The other two gave him conflicted looks. There was no need to ask him what he meant by that.

“Tell us honestly, Zorian… what are the chances we can figure out how to adjust our markers before

this month runs out?” Kael continued, seeing how he had their attention.

Zorian suppressed a sigh. Temporary markers… they had spent almost a year studying them, if one

factored in the time spent in Black Rooms, and in that time they had made significant progress. They

managed to map the general structure of the markers and figure out what many of the pieces did.

They compared these markers to the larger, more complete markers embedded in Zach and Zorian.

They placed and removed temporary markers on random people to test possible modifications and

see what happened. They found out that, yes, the markers really did contain components made out

of divine energies… and they also found a way to deal with that. Through several ruinously

expensive deals with Quatach-Ichl and innumerable destroyed divine artifacts, they managed to

create methods to detect and crudely manipulate strands of divine energy inside their markers. Not

enough to manipulate them as they wished, but enough to tear out some portions of the structure

and change how this divine foundation interacted with more normal magic that surrounded it.

It wasn’t enough. Despite their best efforts, the solution remained frustratingly out of reach.

What bothered Zorian most about this was that he didn’t think the problem was impossible. They

were making good progress. He felt they were definitely on the right track. He felt that this was

something that could definitely be solved in time.

Could they figure out a way to prolong the temporary marker in one more restart? No. Not even

three would be enough. But maybe if they had five or six… if their soul magic was more developed…

if they had easier access to the imperial crown resting on Quatach-Ichl’s head… if they had learned

how to sense divine energies sooner…

If. If, if, if…

“No,” Zorian finally admitted. “There is no chance at all.”

All three of them walked in silence for a while.

“I am actually not that upset,” Taiven eventually said. “The idea that I could just suddenly disappear

at the end of the month was terrifying at first, but I’ve gotten used to it by now. I even died in one of

the restarts.”

Zorian vividly remembered that one. Watching Taiven get decapitated by a war troll was strangely

upsetting, even though he knew she would be fine in the next restart.

“I mean, I don’t want to disappear at the end of the month,” Taiven continued, “but we’ve done

everything we could and it was fun while it lasted. If this is how it has to be, then so be it.”

“Indeed,” Kael said. “Besides, if I understood Zorian correctly, there are only 13 more restarts left at

this point. A little more than a year. We’re not losing all that much.”

“Both of you talk like you think you’re dead for sure,” Zorian said. “Have some faith, okay? Modifying

the temporary markers is probably a failure, but the possibility of exiting the time loop still remains.

This was our fallback plan if we couldn’t modify the markers, remember?”

“Oh?” Taiven perked up. “That’s still an option?”

“Of course,” said Zorian. “What do you think we have been doing all this time?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Taiven said with a grin. “That mean old witch keeps complaining about you

‘wasting your time on distractions’ and ‘taking too many breaks from your duties’, so…”

“Silverlake thinks everyone should be a tireless golem except her,” Zorian said with a derisive snort.

“It’s not like she never takes any breaks or tinkers with new potions that have no connection to

anything urgent.”

“I thought that whole project was still shrouded in uncertainty, though,” Kael pointed out.

“Well, yeah,” Zorian reluctantly admitted. “We have yet to actually try things, so it’s all very

theoretical. However, just because we are uncertain about some things doesn’t mean the attempt is

bound to fail. It’s hard to put actual numbers on things, but I think there is at least a 70% chance that

we could transport people’s souls into the real world, and 30% or so that we could successfully open

a dimensional bridge that would let us physically step out of the time loop.”

The two of them gave him complex looks that he could not interpret. It was a little hard to accurately

discern their emotions these days, since they had both learned to protect their minds and emotions

with unstructured mental defenses. In fact, this was something that all temporary loopers decided to

invest time in, once they realized the extent of Zorian’s mental powers. Even the ones that already

had some level of unstructured mental defenses promptly decided they were insufficient and needed

to be strengthened as much as possible.

Zorian understood their reasoning. It was just like that old saying: trust your neighbor, but lock the

door. Even if you trusted someone to be a moral and principled person, it was better not to tempt

them with easy opportunities. Thus, he did not take such things against them. In fact, he encouraged

it. Considering aranea explicitly considered anyone with an unshielded mind fair game for psychic

invasion and that they were working closely with several groups of them, getting some level of

mental protection was just plain common sense.

“If the only option to exit the time loop is to steal our original bodies from our past selves, I would

rather stay here and forget everything,” Kael said, shaking his head. “Additionally, I only care about

physically leaving if it allows me to take Kana with me. If not, I’d rather stay with her till the end.”

Zorian opened his mouth to say something, but then realized that it probably didn’t matter that Kana

doesn’t have the temporary marker. If they physically left the time loop, every person was as good

as any other.

Would others also want to bring family members with them? That… could get kind of complicated.

“Err, I might have gone for the soul exit if it was actually an option,” Taiven said hesitantly. “I mean, I

feel sorry for old Taiven but let’s get real here… she is kind of an idiot.”

Zorian’s lips twitched into the beginning of a smile, but he suppressed it.

“As it is, I am not actually capable of taking this way out,” Taiven said. “I’m not even good enough to

survive Silverlake’s soul perception granting potion, never mind possessing my old body. So

physically crossing over is the only option for me, really.”

Zorian nodded slowly. Truthfully, this was true for most people. People who had zero experience

with soul magic would find it impossible to get good enough at it to survive the soul transferal and

successfully possess their body. People who were well versed in soul magic, even before the time

loop, would probably be annihilated by the originals if they tried to possess them. Aside from Zorian,

only Kael, Xvim and Lukav had a good chance of pulling that off. And Xvim, much like Kael, had

already ruled out the idea of ‘stealing his own life away from himself’.

“Physical exit is what we’re aiming for, anyway,” Zorian said. “Transferring souls is more of a last

resort than anything.”

“Yes, but you admitted yourself that chances of success aren’t too high. Not even a coin toss,”

Taiven noted. “So yeah, there is still hope… but it’s nothing to get excited about. Hell, you’re

probably putting a positive spin on things to cheer us up!”

“No, not at all,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “I was actually trying to be conservative with my

estimates. I really think this could work.”

“There is one thing that’s been bothering me about all this,” Kael said. “We’ve spent a lot of time

trying to figure out a way out of the time loop, but did you think about what we’re going to do if we

succeed with this? If we physically step into the outside world with all our skills and knowledge?”

“Stop the invasion from destroying Cyoria?” Taiven tried, raising her eyebrow at him.

“Well, yes. But what about afterwards?” Kael asked. “You have an entire life in front of you, but there

is already someone living your life for you. Are you going to avoid your friends and family and set up

a new life for yourself elsewhere? Or are you going to do your best to insert yourself into your old life

and damn the consequences? What if someone reports you to the authorities and they come to drag

you off? How would you explain your presence and identity?”

Taiven squirmed uncomfortably.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, biting her lip. “Honestly, I try not to think about things like that. I’m kind

of impulsive, so even if I reach a resolution here, I will probably just break it when I actually get

there. So there’s no point. I can only hope I’ll be able to figure something out when the time comes. I

don’t want to ruin the other Taiven’s life, but… I don’t know. What about you two?”

“I’m fairly disconnected from most people,” Kael shrugged. “So long as I have my own Kana,

everything is fine. I guess I would deliver my alchemy notes to my original and then wander off to do

my own thing. But I’m not sure very many of us are like that. Silverlake and Alanic, maybe. The rest?

There are probably at least a few of them that would fight bitterly for a piece of their old life.”

“Honestly? I don’t think I could stay away,” Zorian admitted. “I’d try to ‘reform’ my original into

something better. Teach him a few things, nudge him into getting closer with Kirielle, things like that.

A bit manipulative, but it would come along with personal magic instruction and other help so I think

it could work. I wouldn’t try to steal his life away, though. If there was no place for me in my old life, I

would find something else to amuse myself with.”

“As I said, I’m not sure everyone would be so serene about it,” Kael pointed out.

“Yeah, I know,” Zorian nodded. “Zach and I purposely didn’t raise the issue to the group, since we

felt there was no way to reach any kind of official agreement on this. No matter the conclusion,

someone would disagree. Possibly violently. The entire group might even fragment, if someone feels

very strongly about the option that was chosen or not chosen. It’s better to keep everyone focused

on the immediate problem and worry about these things later.”

Despite such efforts, however, they already had a couple of casualties. Two restarts ago, a pair of

professors Xvim included into the group decided they couldn’t handle the existential implications of

the time loop and asked for their temporary markers to be removed so they could forget everything.

Additionally, one of the aranea from the Luminous Advocates became so hysterical and violent that

the other aranea asked for her to be stripped of her marker and ejected from the group. Zorian

wasn’t sure what had caused that, but since the other Luminous Advocates mysteriously acquired

soul perception around that time, he suspected it was a product of some secret procedure they had

collectively performed on themselves. In the interest of not starting a fight, though, he decided not to

pursue the issue.

With this being the last restart in which the temporary markers would remain effective, the pressure

on people would only increase.

Zorian really hoped nobody would crack too badly before the end.

- break -

Spells could only persist for so long. Even the most stable spell, supplied with an ample amount of

mana, would fall apart in a couple of hours if not anchored to something. Thus, enhancement rituals

had a problem. They aimed to place the user under a permanent magic effect or give them an innate

magic ability, but that meant they had to anchor the spell to something to prevent it from decaying.

This was a great problem. Anchoring the magic to one’s flesh by inscribing sigils into the skin was ill

advised. Forcing large quantities of mana to flow through living flesh, even if it was one’s personal

mana, was usually unhealthy in the long term. Additionally, the resulting anchor was easy to break

by physically harming the sigils, which was likely to result in dire consequences for the user. Abrupt,

uncontrolled spell failures were dangerous enough in normal circumstances – when the spell was

embedded into one’s very flesh and bones, the grisly result could be easily imagined.

Fortunately, there was a solution. Far in the distant past, some nameless mage had discovered how

to repurpose a portion of their mana reserves into a spell anchor for the enhancement ritual. Since

one’s mana reserves were kept naturally stable by the soul, any magic fashioned from them would

also be kept stable. The only problem was that since the anchor was literally made out of one’s

mana reserves, the caster would permanently have less mana at their disposal. The mana used in

the construction of the anchor would never recover, since it was still there in the caster’s reserves,

being stabilized by their soul along with the rest of it.

There was one additional issue, however. Even though an enhancement ritual could grant the user a

magical ability, it was ultimately just fancy transformation magic. It never expired, it was almost

impossible to dispel and the user had very fine control over it, but they would not get the same

instinctive affinity with it that the base creature had.

This was where blood magic came into play. It allowed a mage to anchor the spell not only to their

mana reserves, but to their life force as well. The resulting connection was deep and potent – potent

enough that the user’s descendants had a chance to inherit the ability in question as a bloodline.

The innate understanding of the base creature was also transferred over to the new user, allowing

them to use it almost as well as someone who had been born with it right from the start.

Enhancement rituals were dangerous. Poorly executed, they could kill the user or permanently ruin

them as a mage. More than one mage had completely locked down their mana reserves or

transformed them into something that ripped them to shreds from the inside.

Blood magic rituals were dangerous. The user had to cut complicated patterns into their flesh and

bleed themselves in order to stir up their vitality and coax their life force into appropriate structures.

Unless one knew exactly what they were doing, it was very easy to die of blood loss, or worse.

Zach and Zorian combined the two anyway. They started small, but moved on quickly to more

ambitious projects due to time constraints. They made mistakes, but none of them too serious… and

any lingering consequences were washed away at the end of every restart. With the help of Kael,

they tracked down and talked with surviving morlock blood mages scattered across the continent,

seeking advice and tricks of the trade. They practiced with their new abilities and took note of which

one worked best for them and why.

Now, with time running out and this restart being so critical, they decided to immediately put those

skills into practice. They performed the relevant rituals at the very beginning of the restart. A week

and a half later, when their mana reserves and life force mostly stabilized, they gathered Xvim,

Silverlake and Daimen for a project that would test their dimensionalism skills to the limit. Something

that would prove that they were capable of eventually creating the gateway out of the loop.

They were going to create a miniature copy of the palace orb.

Currently, Zach, Zorian, Silverlake, Xvim and Daimen were all standing on the edge of a massive

spell formula circle, equidistant from each other. They had spent the past several hours embedding

the spell circle into the ground of this place, followed by setting up several complicated wards that

had to be layered just right for the whole thing to work correctly. Now they were resting and adjusting

their minds for the final task in front of them.

There was a luxurious house sitting in the center of the circle, surrounded by a large garden and

ornamental trees. It stood in a fairly isolated location and Zach and Zorian actually bought the entire

place, so they shouldn’t be interrupted by anyone. Silverlake complained about the amount of money

that had been wasted on this, when they could have simply ‘stolen’ a house from someone or picked

a random patch of ground, but Zach didn’t want to hear it. He wanted his own pocket mansion, and

he wanted it to really be his.

In any case, the idea behind their current project was a little different than that behind other pocket

dimension creation projects. Previously, Zach and Zorian had focused on isolating a patch of space

with a dimensional membrane and then inflating it to desired volume. Now they would be forcibly

isolating a large patch of land from the rest of the world, compressing it and then attaching it to a

prepared anchor object. In this case, that was a ball of magically-reinforced glass, for maximum

resemblance to the palace orb.

This was similar to the method Silverlake used to hide her home from outside scrutiny, but harder.

Silverlake simply compressed an area to make it seemingly ‘disappear’, but it remained connected to

the rest of the world. That made her pocket dimension immovable, but easier to actually create.

What they were doing now, however, would require them to effectively tear out a piece of reality and

put it into a portable box for their own use.

The house and its surrounding land were not nearly as big as the space inside the palace orb.

Despite that, attempting this required all five of them to join hands and perform a group magic ritual,

employing every trick and advantage they could think of… and they still weren’t sure if they could

pull it off. Zorian didn’t even want to think what it took to create something like the actual palace orb.

Looking around, Zorian saw that the others were well rested and ready to start. He took a deep

breath and stepped forward. Five simulacrums followed after him.

Zorian had long since cracked the method that Princess used to coordinate her eight heads as one

entity, and was now capable of using it with his simulacrums. It was a fascinating thing, connecting

multiple viewpoints and thought-streams into one unified perspective, but it did have an important

limitation: it could only be used when Zorian and his simulacrums were broadly doing the same

thing. Such as fighting the same enemy or cooperating on the same task. If he was reading books in

Cyoria and his simulacrums were scattered all over the world, each doing their own thing, there

would be no connecting points to bind their consciousness together and the hydra method couldn’t

be used. But for the task at hand, it was just perfect.

He then activated the magic ability he had acquired through the enhancement ritual. He had

acquired it from the humble tunneler toad, whose ability to perceive and navigate warped space had

seemed most useful for his purposes. It wasn’t the best ability he could have gotten, but it was

relatively cheap and worked well enough for Zorian’s purposes. Anchoring it to his mana reserves

robbed him of roughly 8% of his maximum mana, which pained him, but did not affect him too badly.

Finally, he activated the mental enhancements he had crafted over the past year or so, helped by

numerous aranea experts and even some human researchers. Many of his simulacrums paid with

their short lives to test these enhancements, and the end result was appropriately impressive for

something made after so much sacrifice. His thoughts immediately became clearer and more

focused, his integration with his simulacrums deepened and his ability to calculate and measure

things at a glance became superhuman.

Around him, he saw the others prepare themselves as well.

Zach was leaning back and forth on his feet, humming some sort of tune to himself. He looked

relaxed and careless, but there was a distant look in his eyes, as if he wasn’t really all there. His

choice for the creature to use an enhancement ritual on was the voidsoul deer. Zach seemed to

really like its ability to alter trajectories of things in the space around it, since that meant the ability

was useful in combat, as well as for things like this. It was a fairly expensive ability in terms of mana

reserves, but Zach was easily able to afford it. Zorian could feel the space around Zach ripple and

warp as he flexed his new ability in preparation of the task at hand.

Daimen’s presence was a bit of a surprise. Before the time loop, Daimen hadn’t even known how to

cast the gate spell, never mind how to use pocket dimension magic. However, his reputation wasn’t

for nothing. With a year of time and access to all the restricted material and knowledgeable tutors he

could wish for, Daimen had experienced a meteoric rise in his dimensionalism skills. It reignited

Zorian’s jealousy a bit to see him blaze through things so easily, given that Zorian had to try so hard

to get where Daimen currently was, but objectively speaking, it was a good thing to have another

capable dimensionalist on hand. It increased their chances of success immensely.

Daimen had also chosen to dabble in enhancement rituals along with Zach and Zorian – the only

one of the temporary loopers that dared to do so. He picked a phase spider that Zach and Zorian

were lucky to track down in one of the restarts. Their signature ability, which was literally a power to

create small pocket dimensions, was bound to be very useful today.

Silverlake had stabbed six gold-plated stakes into the ground around her and was mumbling

something to herself and making some sort of strange finger gestures. They didn’t look like

spellcasting gestures. It kind of reminded Zorian of Kirielle trying to perform math with the help of her

fingers, except that he knew damn well that Silverlake was frighteningly good at performing

calculations in her head. Her growth in skill over the past five restarts was difficult to judge, as she

often did things on her own, and gave bullshit explanations when people tried to question her about

it. Still, her skill at dimensionalism and soul magic made her one of the key people in the group, and

little could be done about it.

Xvim simply stood on the edge of the spell formula circle, staring forward with arms crossed behind

his back. He gave off a silent and stoic air, as if the problem in front of them was no big deal at all.

Zorian didn’t think his magic had improved all that much in the past five restarts, but then again he

had already been a highly-capable archmage before the time loop had started. At his level, every

improvement took a lot of time and effort as one started hitting their personal limits and their magic

plateaued.

With a silent signal, the five of them began casting.

Glowing filaments of light sprang from Zorian’s hands, and from the hands of his simulacrums,

crisscrossing into a dome of light over the entire area, before seemingly sinking into thin air and

disappearing. Silverlake fired pitch black beams from her fingers at seemingly random spots in the

air, causing flashes of red light to burst out on the invisible boundary, while Zach and Xvim created

pale white rings that spun lazily around the outer perimeter. Space warped and twisted, distorting the

house and its surroundings like hot summer air and causing strange currents and whirlpools to be

created in the sky.

A spatial membrane eventually sprang up around the house, transparent and spherical. Its surface

rippled and undulated like it was made from water. Strands of inky blackness occasionally radiated

from points on its surface, as if reality itself was cracking apart and letting everyone see the terrible

void that existed beneath everything. These were hurriedly sealed by the five participants,

disappearing into flashes of rainbow light before springing back anew somewhere else. A miniature

cyclone whipped about in the air, kicking up dust and pelting the participants with leaves and small

stones.

The process took hours and hours. Five times they had to rest to recover their strength, but

thankfully the ritual was designed specifically with that in mind. They knew they would not have

enough mana to finish the project in one go, so small breathers were planned in advance.

Eventually the process reached a critical point. The spatial membrane turned completely opaque

and pitch black, its surface churning wildly like a pot of boiling water. Cracks spread out from the

ground as the entire area was ripped out of the surrounding landscape, small tremors threatening to

knock down the participants – something that would surely disrupt the casting at a critical moment

and ruin everything. In the end everyone kept their balance, but the momentary distraction caused

lances of spatial cracks to scythe through the area, reducing trees into chunks and utterly destroying

one of Zorian’s simulacrums. He managed to compensate for the loss, however, and the casting

continued.

The spherical black membrane started to repeatedly expand and then collapse inward, looking

almost like a giant black heart. This process continued for several minutes, but if one observed the

whole process carefully they would notice that the sphere was gradually getting smaller and smaller.

It was being repeatedly compressed into an ever decreasing volume.

When the sphere had reached half of its original size, a fundamental change occurred and the whole

area of space seemed to collapse inward, as if it was about to be sucked into a tiny point in the

center. Zach reacted immediately, throwing a large glass ball into the center of the collapsing mass

while the rest scattered sixteen stone stabilizers into the surrounding space. Each of the stones was

a cube densely covered in spell formula, and they immediately floated into a dense spherical

formation around the black mass.

In only a few seconds, the black mass was completely sucked into the glass ball and everything was

silent and still. The strange lights and spatial distortions disappeared. The area inside the spell

formula circle had completely disappeared, leaving behind a circular crater where the house and

garden once stood. In the center of that crater floated an innocuous-looking glass globe, with sixteen

stone cubes lazily orbiting around it.

Then, with a deafening boom, all of the stone cubes shattered and fell to the ground. The glass

globe was still fine, however – the stabilizers had sacrificed themselves to give that final push for the

whole process and firmly attach the newly-made ‘pocket mansion’ to its portable anchor.

If one looked closely, they would be able to see a miniature, lifelike house suspended in the center

of the globe. It even appeared intact, which was great. There was a nontrivial chance for everything

inside the globe to end up getting wrecked by the stresses of the creation process, if it was not

channeled properly.

Complete success.

Everyone gathered around the globe to gawk at it and admire their handiwork. Zach, Zorian,

Silverlake and Daimen were in visibly high spirits following the success of such a difficult project.

Only Xvim managed to retain his reserved attitude, though Zorian felt he still looked faintly pleased

with himself.

“You know, I just realized I have no idea how you intend to power this thing,” Daimen said. “Surely

this thing requires a great deal of mana to keep stable.”

“We placed a permanent miniature gate inside the house,” Zach said. “It connects to a cavern deep

in the Dungeon, sucking up mana to keep both the gate and the pocket dimension operating. It’s too

tiny for the dungeon denizens to pass through, but mana can be collected just fine.”

“Oh? You cracked Quatach-Ichl’s permanent gates?” Daimen asked, surprised.

Silverlake puffed herself up, looking pretty smug. Her contributions were pretty crucial in cracking the

method Quatach-Ichl used to make his gate stabilization frame. Hers and, oddly enough, that of the

Filigree Sages. Their method of creating spell formula anchors had some surprising similarities to

the methods Quatach-Ichl used in his construction of the stabilization frames.

“Yes, we finally managed to replicate the lich’s methods,” confirmed Zorian. “It has limited

usefulness to us as a method of transport, though, since it takes a while to make those. It’s more

convenient to just use my simulacrums as mobile gate creators.”

“We have made a great deal of progress,” Xvim spoke up. “This globe is a perfect representation of

that. However, I wonder if that is really enough to let us make a gateway leading out of the time

loop.”

Everyone shared a look for a moment as they considered the issue.

“We have a chance,” Zorian said.

“The chance is too low for my liking,” Silverlake grumbled, before Zorian could say anything else.

Her good mood seemed to deflate a little. “If we had another six months…”

“But we don’t. We won’t be able to crack the temporary markers in less than a month,” Zach told her.

“Why even waste time thinking about that?”

“Well it’s easy for you and Zorian to be so relaxed about that,” Silverlake sneered at him. “You’ll still

be there, even if this all fails, won’t you?”

“You are oversimplifying things and you know it,” Zorian said, frowning. “The protections on the

temporary markers are such that we won’t be able to place temporary markers on you for the next

six restarts. We have no hope at all of pulling this off without you. Thus, we would be forced to wait

until the very last moment to make our next attempt… and if that fails, we are lost. Do you honestly

think Zach and I are comfortable with that? We are just as invested in the success of this project as

you are.”

“Hmph,” Silverlake scoffed. “Almost as invested, I suppose. But not quite as much.”

“What do you think they should have done, then?” Xvim asked, giving her a knowing look.

“They should have experimented more freely with temporary markers and people’s souls. There are

plenty of people in the world that nobody cares about, and it’s not like the damage would have been

permanent,” Silverlake said, looking Xvim straight in the eye. Her voice was loud and clear, but

perfectly calm. “They should have given Quatach-Ichl a temporary marker and recruited him into the

group.”

Ugh.

“Both ideas were already discussed and soundly rejected, and not just by Zach and Zorian,” Xvim

pointed out.

“We were already taking a huge risk by dealing with the lich as much as we did,” Zorian said. “Even

a minor mistake could easily burn all of our remaining restarts away.”

“The old bag of bones would be more likely to ruin us than help us,” Zach added. “Without us, his

plan probably succeeds and Cyoria is leveled to the ground. Why would he want to risk that by

helping us escape?”

“Bah!” Silverlake spat. As in, she literally spat on the ground to express her frustration. “I can see

when I’m outvoted. Besides, it’s too late to change things now… though I still say our chances are

too low. Surely there is something more that could be done?”

“Well, you did say we just need more time,” Daimen pointed out. “If the project to turn the palace orb

into a Black Room succeeds as well as expected, we should get another couple of months in a time

dilation room.”

“We already turned the palace room into a time dilation chamber two times by now,” Silverlake

pointed out. “It was impressive, but the effectiveness was little better than that of a regular Black

Room. It just had larger volume. Why expect this attempt to be any different?”

“Well, if Krantin and his staff are to be believed–” began Daimen.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Silverlake cut him off. “In the meantime, I have another idea…”

Although Silverlake could be very abrasive and unpleasant, her skill at dimensionalism was

undeniable and many of her ideas were quite insightful. Some of them were even perfectly ethical

and legal, shockingly enough.

Thus, the group eventually returned to Cyoria, peacefully discussing various plans along the way…

- break -

The search for the imperial staff was long and frustrating. For a long time, they didn’t have even the

slightest clue how to narrow down their search. Zorian was almost willing to write off the entire

endeavor as a lost cause and focus entirely on the exit portal project. However, Daimen felt it was

beneath his pride to let the expedition end in failure, and eventually found a clue.

One of their earliest leads for the staff was a dragon mage called Violet-Eyed Disaster, or just

Violeteye for short. However, she was almost as hard to track down as the staff itself, and there

were plenty of other candidates around, so they didn’t focus on her in particular. In time, however, a

curious fact became obvious – Violeteye seemed capable of instantaneously teleporting herself

across vast distances. There was simply no other way to explain how she could get around so

quickly and evade pursuers. Dragons were fast flyers, but her speed was unearthly. This idea was

reinforced when Daimen and his group caught sight of her and pursued, only for her to disappear

when they briefly lost sight of her.

This was significant, since dragon mages had huge issues trying to use teleportation. Dimensional

magic was nearly unknown among dragons, and the sort of teleportation Violeteye was performing

would be shocking even in a human mage.

She was most likely using some kind of divine artifact to pull it off. And by following after her and

repeatedly provoking her, Zach and Zorian eventually confirmed it was a simple, unadorned staff.

Deep in the jungles of Blantyrre, atop a small mountain, a fierce battle was raging between Zach and

Zorian on one side and Violeteye the dragon mage on the other. Shattered remains of Zorian’s

combat golems littered the mountainside, and several large craters lay scattered around the place.

Smoke and dust covered the skies.

Roaring in outrage, Violeteye swooped down on Zach’s position, opening her jaws and breathing fire

at him. The jet of flame was unnaturally hot and concentrated, even for dragon breath – a white-hot

incineration beam that set nearby bushes on fire just by passing near them. Without flinching, Zach

placed an opaque black shield made out of spatial forces in front of him. The incineration breath

sank into the shield and harmlessly disappeared, as if it had never existed in the first place.

Moments later, he was hit by a gust of magically-enhanced wind. It looked rather ethereal, a gentle

rainbow glow suffusing it, but the moment it reached Zach it caused the black shield to collapse into

nothingness and almost sent him tumbling down the mountain side.

A trio of stone cylinders flew in the air towards the dragon, shining with dangerous blue light. She

managed to knock them away from her before they exploded, but it disrupted her charge and

allowed Zach to regain his balance.

She sent a quick glare at Zorian, who was standing in the distance with a gun-like cylinder-launcher

in his hands, before judging Zach a greater threat and smashing her tail towards him like a flail.

Zach didn’t try to dodge or put some distance between them. He merely cast another spell, causing

huge hands of stone to erupt from the ground beneath her, reaching towards her.

Her eyes narrowed imperceptibly, but she continued her attack, trusting her strength and vast

reserves of magic. She was justified in her confidence when trading blow for blow with a human,

since they could never match a dragon in terms of toughness.

However, her attack… missed.

Her eyes widened in surprise, not understanding what had happened. This wasn’t the sort of rookie

mistake she could ever make.

If one had looked really closely, though, one could have seen space itself subtly shift around Zach

just before the tail slap had descended upon him…

The stone hands closed around the dragon, pulling her downward. She manifested huge

ectoplasmic claws to crush them into powder, but the moment of weakness was enough for Zorian’s

simulacrums, who immediately teleported into the vicinity. Just as she was about to turn her

ectoplasmic claws towards the simulacrums, her mind swam in sudden vertigo and her vision grew

blurry. When she finally regained her clarity of mind, she found a glittering crystalline spear flying at

her, courtesy of Zach. Arcs of red light sparked dangerously on its surface, promising pain and

disintegration to anything hit by the spear.

Invading the mind of a dragon was not an easy thing to do… but it was within Zorian’s capabilities, if

only for a moment.

Roaring, Violeteye conjured an omnidirectional sound wave that hurled all of the simulacrums away

from her like a bunch of rag dolls and destroyed all nearby obstacles. The spear continued to fly, but

it was knocked off course and only glanced off her flank, tearing out a chunk of her flesh but largely

leaving her intact.

She launched herself in the air and tried to flee. She didn’t teleport away like she had the first few

times Zach and Zorian had tried to corner her, presumably because the staff she was using had run

out of charges by now. However, she was still a dragon, and few things could catch her in flight if

she fled at maximum speed.

Zach and Zorian were nearly out of mana by this point, and Zorian was starting to run out of bombs

and other items, too. Even Zach, with his immense mana reserves, could not compare to the

stamina of the dragon. They could chase her down, but if she kept stalling and disengaging, she

would eventually wear them down and maybe even turn the tables on them. She probably knew that

and was deliberately using that as a tactic. Considering that she was armed with a convenient

retreat in the form of the teleportation staff, this was probably how she usually fought. Wearing down

the enemy by repeatedly retreating and coming back was likely second nature to her by now.

Unfortunately for her, Zach and Zorian weren’t alone. Before she could get very far, she found

Alanic, Xvim and Daimen waiting for her in the distance. A roar of frustration echoed across the

entire mountain while Zach and Zorian sat down to recover their mana reserves and catch their

breath.

“Ha ha, I bet she didn’t expect that,” Zach said, grinning. His face was smeared with dust and there

was a thin line of blood running down his left arm where a piece of shrapnel managed to get through

his defenses, but he appeared to not notice it. “Now she, too, can experience what is like to be worn

down by repeated attacks while her opponents take a rest every once in a while.”

“Didn’t you kill Oganj, who is a famous dragon mage, all by yourself in one of the early restarts?”

Zorian asked curiously. “I know he couldn’t teleport around and was less annoying to fight, but he

shouldn’t be any weaker. How on earth did you manage to tackle him on your own?”

“Trial and error,” Zach chuckled awkwardly. “Lots of trial and error. I honestly do not recommend it.”

They fell silent after that, simply watching the battle unfold in front of them.

- break -

“We’ve done it,” Zach breathed.

Laid on the ground in front of him were five objects: a glass orb, a plain metal ring, a gleaming

dagger, an ornate crown and a simple staff.

All five pieces of the Key, gathered in one place.

The staff Violeteye had been using was indeed the imperial staff they were looking for. They had

already brought it to the Guardian of the Threshold for inspection and found out about its powers. It

had the ability to place up to six undetectable recall points and allowed the user to teleport back to

their recall points… regardless of the distances involved. Each recall point could only be used once

every 24 hours, but this was still a very potent ability.

That was for normal users. For the time loop controller, the staff was even more useful, since the

recall points remained in place across restarts. That meant that if one began a restart with the staff

in their hands, they could potentially travel anywhere on the planet in the blink of an eye.

Zach and Zorian didn’t begin their restarts with the staff in their hands, though, so the item’s

usefulness was nearly nonexistent. They had to travel so long and search so far for an item that

gave godlike movement capabilities to people… there was some dark humor in the situation, but

Zorian didn’t feel like he could appreciate it at the moment.

In any case, at this point the whole thing didn’t matter. The staff was important because it was part of

the Key needed to unbar the exit of the time loop, not because of its innate properties. Of course, by

the time they acquired it, they already had the orb and the ring, so they were only missing two more

items to complete the set. The dagger and the crown.

The dagger was… well, not exactly easy to acquire, but it was entirely doable at this point. They had

familiarized themselves enough with the wards on the royal treasury that they could break into it and

steal the dagger on their own, without any help from Quatach-Ichl. So they did just that. It caused a

terrible uproar, and everyone was still searching for the thieves, but Zach and Zorian were fairly sure

they had covered their tracks well enough.

Getting the crown, on the other hand, had been something they had agonized quite a bit over. They

succeeded in the end, but now they had Quatach-Ichl after their heads and the restart was not even

halfway over. The ancient lich had plenty of time to track them down and make them pay for what

they did, which is something they never let him have in the previous restarts.

Still, with only one piece of the Key missing, how could they possibly resist the temptation to

complete it? There was no way they could have waited until the end of the restart to do this. For all

they knew, using the Key may give them options that hadn’t existed until now.

Numerous people crowded the space around Zach and Zorian, peering at the items on the ground.

Pretty much everyone had arrived to take a look at them, even though they were nothing special in

terms of appearance. Scattered whispering and quiet speculation filled the air and people speculated

what would happen when they were brought before the Guardian of the Threshold.

After some quick discussion, Zach and Zorian decided to bring the Key to the Guardian of the

Threshold right away to see what would happen… and they would be taking everyone with them to

witness it as well.

Previously, they had already tried to bring a temporary looper into the space of the Sovereign gate

and failed. The Guardian of the Threshold later confirmed that temporary loopers are unable to

access the space. However, this security measure was childishly easy to bypass through a short

duration soul bond that allowed the Controller to simply ‘pull’ outsiders with them as they entered the

Sovereign Gate. Once inside, the Guardian of the Threshold largely ignored their presence,

recognizing them as temporary loopers, but completely unconcerned about the fact that Zach and

Zorian were breaking the rules. Zach and Zorian had used this method to bring various people into

the Sovereign Gate at multiple occasions, so they did not foresee any problems.

Thus, the whole group made way into the secret time magic research facility beneath Cyoria and,

after some small preparations, entered the Sovereign Gate.

The Guardian of the Threshold soon popped into existence in front of them, just like he always did.

He was still the same human-like glowing entity, his face emotionless like a sculpted statue.

“Welcome, Controller,” the Guardian greeted.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Zach. “I’m glad to see you too, you lovable idiot. Did you notice we’ve brought the

Key to you?”

The Guardian was silent for a moment.

“One moment, please,” it eventually said, before becoming silent again.

In the dark void of the Sovereign Gate space, there was only a silent glowing humanoid and a small

throng of people anxiously waiting for his reaction. The Guardian of the Threshold did not appear to

mind the large number of visitors, continuing his mysterious pondering with not a care in the world.

The temporary loopers around Zach and Zorian simply squirmed nervously, not saying much. They

had learned by now that the Guardian of the Threshold utterly ignored temporary loopers, refusing to

answer their questions or even acknowledge their existence. Watching Daimen and Silverlake

getting progressively more angry as the entity ignored their comments had been rather amusing for

Zorian the first time he witnessed it, but thankfully this time nobody lost their temper.

In any case, the Guardian eventually finished whatever it was doing and started speaking again.

“Everything is as it should be,” it said. “They Key is valid. Do you want to claim your privileges now?”

“Privileges? Why, I love privileges,” Zach said, grinning. “Yes. Give me all of those.”

“Done,” the entity immediately said.

“Can I unbar the gate now?” Zach asked.

“Yes,” the Guardian of the Threshold confirmed. “Do you want–”

“Yes, damn it, yes!” Zach said, voice full of exasperation. “Do it now.”

“As you wish,” it said. It paused for a few moment, silently performing some kind of task again. “It is

done. The gate is now unbar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar---”

Zorian watched in growing horror as the Guardian of the Threshold suddenly started twitching and

stuttering as if it was having some kind of seizure. His head rolled around at impossible angles,

rotating a full 360 degrees, his entire torso squirming and bulging as if something was trying to burst

out of it.

He had a very bad feeling about this.

“What the hell is happening?” someone asked behind him.

“I don’t know,” Zach said, frowning. “This has never happened befo–”

Everything suddenly became quiet. At first Zorian thought Zach had just stopped speaking because

he noticed or realized something important, but when he glanced towards him he found Zach gone.

Everyone but Zorian was gone. It was just him, a madly twitching Guardian of the Threshold and a

quiet, featureless black void all around them.

He immediately tried to return to his body, but failed.

Shit… Well, at least the Guardian of the Threshold was starting to calm down. He was twitching less,

and no longer twisted his head and limbs at impossible angles. Maybe–

A multitude of eyes suddenly snapped open all over Guardian of the Threshold’s body, blinking

rapidly for a few moments before focusing straight at Zorian. Each one was different. Different sizes,

different color, different internal structure. Some of them had multiple irises. Some of them glowed.

Some of them were multifaceted, like those of an insect. Some of them made his mind feel numb

just looking at them.

“Zorian Kazinski,” the Guardian of the Threshold said. Was it still the Guardian of the Threshold?

Freaky eyes aside, even his voice was different. It was booming and resonant, with not a trace of

humanity in it. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Who are you?” Zorian immediately challenged.

“You call me Panaxeth,” it immediately answered.

Zorian’s mind froze for a moment. What… how…

“The primordial?” he asked numbly, his voice filled with disbelief.

“Yes,” it answered.

Suddenly, some of its eyes closed and disappeared. The ones that made Zorian hurt to look at, as

well as some of the freakier ‘normal’ ones.

“You can talk?” Zorian asked. It was a dumb question, but he was still in shock and couldn’t help

himself.

Panaxeth seemed to think so too, because he ignored the question.

“I can get you out of here,” Panaxeth said. Its form changed again, additional eyes closing and his

form becoming more humanlike in both color and texture. “All you have to do is make a contract

with me.”

A contract?

“No thanks,” he said immediately, shaking his head in denial.

“You will never get out of here alive without me,” it told him. Its voice acquired a human-like quality

by this point, and most of the eyes were gone. “The other person didn’t either.”

“Red Robe?” Zorian asked.

“I never asked his name,” Panaxeth said. He looked entirely like a man by now, though his features

seem to shift all the time – male and female, old and young, all kinds of skin tones and facial

features… “Does it matter? We’re talking about you, now. Swear on your life you will help free me

and I will incarnate you outside of this crumbling world.”

“Why would I do that, though?” Zorian asked.

“You get to live?” Panaxeth asked, sounding a little mystified by his response.

His constant shifting of his appearance slowed down greatly at this point. He seemed to have settled

on a female form now, tall and good-looking, with long black hair and a body to die f–

Zorian scowled. The damn thing was slowly changing its appearance to appeal to him as much as

possible, wasn’t it? It constantly cycled through different appearances, all the while paying attention

to his body movements and facial expressions to see what evoked a good response in him.

It was showing him what it thought he wanted to see.

Suddenly, the entity shifted into a perfect copy of Kirielle.

“I just want to live and be free!” she said, her lip quivering and her voice on the verge of tears.

“You are not Kirielle!” Zorian shouted at it, his temper rising.

Panaxeth immediately changed forms again, copying Taiven. Then Zach. Then Xvim, Daimen, Ilsa,

Imaya…

Some of these people… how did it even know how they looked and sounded? Was it reading his

mind?

He immediately strengthened his mental defenses, even though he could detect no intrusion.

“Why are you talking to me now?” Zorian asked. “I was here plenty of times before.”

“The gate was barred until now, so there was no point in speaking to you,” Panaxeth answered. “I

can only get people out when the way is open.”

“But you could have contacted me like this all this time?” Zorian asked.

“Yes,” Panaxeth confirmed. “The Sovereign Gate has been damaged over the years, some of the

safeguards failing. That is why they stopped using it for a long time. However, there is no point in

speaking to most people unless they are strong enough to help me and unless the way is open. I did

not think you could gather the entire Key before the world crumbled, but I’m glad to be proved

wrong. We can help each other, Zorian. We can even discuss additional rewards once I am out of

my cage.”

“But what if I fail?” Zorian asked.

“You die, of course,” Panaxeth said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “That’s what the

contract is for.”

“So you get me out of here and in return I must help free you or die?” Zorian asked.

“Exactly,” Panaxeth confirmed.

“I’m going to have to say no,” Zorian sighed.

Panaxeth stared at him for a second. It seemed to realize it would never be able to convince Zorian

to take this sort of deal, no matter what it used to entice him.

“You will regret that,” it said. “This was a one-time offer. I will not bother contacting you again.”

Zorian was of two minds about this. On one hand that was a bit disappointing, since he would like to

have more talks with a primordial to see if he could get something substantial out of it. On the other

hand, it was a freaking primordial and it seemed to be reading his mind in some way he couldn’t

detect!

It was probably for the best that it never wanted to see him again.

“You gave up pretty quickly,” Zorian commented. “How are you so sure there is no chance to

convince me in the future?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Panaxeth said. “Someone else has already taken my offer.”

Zorian’s eyes widened at the comment. Before he could ask Panaxeth what it meant by that, the

generic female form in front of him disappeared and he was surrounded by noise again. He was

once again standing next to Zach, with temporary loopers standing around him. All of them were

screaming, shouting and talking at once. It was abundantly obvious that Zorian wasn’t the only one

who had found himself alone, facing a terrifying primordial entity.

And after the situation had calmed down somewhat and he had done a quick headcount, a terrifying

realization suddenly dawned to Zorian.

Silverlake was gone.

Chapter 090

Change of Plans

It wasn’t long before the group decided to leave the Sovereign Gate space and return to their bodies

outside. Partially this was because the Guardian of the Threshold was gone, leaving them on their

own in the silent void. When Panaxeth ended his interaction with Zorian and others, he took the

Guardian he had been possessing along with him. Or maybe he was the Guardian in the end, who

could know? Regardless, with the Guardian no longer present, there was little point in them staying

there either.

The second, more important reason, was that Silverlake was gone and they desperately wanted to

check if she was outside, waiting for them. Although Panaxeth’s statement that someone had

already taken his offer and her subsequent disappearance strongly suggested she had betrayed

them, Zorian held on to the hope that she had merely left the Sovereign Gate on her own. Somehow.

It was a hope that would not last long. Whatever force Panaxeth had used to stop Zach and Zorian

from returning to their body had dissipated with his disappearance, so getting out of the Sovereign

Gate was done without incident. Once outside, they found Silverlake’s lifeless body lying on the

floor.

She was dead. There was no evidence of struggle. No wounds, obvious or subtle. No indication of

any sort of foul play from the facility staff or hidden enemies. It was as if her soul simply disappeared

from her body all of a sudden, painlessly killing her.

It was the same kind of dead that they had already seen in the aranea beneath Cyoria and the other

‘soulkilled’ individuals they’d come across over the restarts.

A grim atmosphere descended upon the group. Zach was so enraged he incinerated Silverlake’s

body into ashes before anyone could stop him. Zorian wanted to scold him for destroying critical

clues as to what happened, but Alanic placed his hand on his shoulder and shook his head, silently

telling him to let it go. Maybe it was better that way. This wasn’t the time for starting arguments and

they probably got all they would have gotten out of her corpse anyway.

They didn’t stay in the time magic research facility for long. They needed to talk to everyone about

what they had seen and heard, about what Panaxeth had told them in private, but that was best

done in the privacy of their base at the Noveda Estate. However, an issue suddenly rose up when

they tried to leave the facility. Apparently, while the facility staff accepted their mysterious orders

without complaint, they still paid close attention to everyone coming and leaving from the facility.

They knew exactly how many people their group had, and they knew that Silverlake had suddenly

gone missing.

That was a surprisingly thorny situation to get out of. Zach was still visibly fuming and looked like he

was going to start throwing around fireballs at all these people questioning him where their

companion had suddenly disappeared to, but Krantin refused to let the matter drop. Unfortunately,

explaining that Silverlake was dead and that Zach had already incinerated her soulless body was not

an option. In the end, Zorian had to memory edit roughly half of the facility personnel to make them

forget Silverlake had ever entered the place that day and then make alterations to the physical

records which also kept track of that kind of thing.

Strange as that sounded, altering physical records turned out to be a lot harder than editing

memories. Those records had some very inventive protections against such tampering, whereas the

minds of facility staff were largely unprotected against mental tampering.

Still, although the immediate issue was dealt with, Zorian could already see that their headaches in

regards to the facility and Silverlake’s presence there were only starting. Silverlake had been one of

the crucial people in regards to their project of turning the imperial orb into a better Black Room. The

void left by her disappearance was going to be keenly felt in the near future.

He still had trouble believing this was actually happening, to be honest. He had fully expected their

circumstances to change once they brought the key to the Guardian of the Threshold, but not like

this. How could Panaxeth even contact them through the Guardian? Even if the Sovereign Gate was

made from a primordial, that primordial was clearly not Panaxeth. He of the Flowing Flesh was

imprisoned inside the Hole, the massive circular abyss around which Cyoria was built. He had been

stuck there since the time the primordials had been sealed away, presumably. The Sovereign Gate,

on the other hand, had been primarily used in northern Miasina before its current use. It didn’t make

sense… how could Panaxeth infiltrate the time loop mechanism to appear before them? How could

he take people out of the time loop? And what had he offered Silverlake to make her swear some

kind of death pact with a godlike primordial entity that considered them useful tools at best?

He didn’t know. He hoped other people had managed to get something useful out of the primordial,

unlike him.

Having finally left the facility, the group gathered in the Noveda Estate. They left people some free

time to collect their thoughts and calm down, and then started discussing what happened.

The first issue, of course, was Panaxeth. Or something that claimed to be Panaxeth, anyway. They

had no proof that the unknown entity was telling the truth, but then again it had no reason to lie

about that either. Identifying as Panaxeth would not set anyone at ease. In any case, talking to the

rest of the group confirmed what everyone had suspected by now – ‘Panaxeth’ had somehow

dragged each of them into their own individual space for a private conversation.

Everyone except Zach, that is. Zach alone did not merit a meeting with the primordial, it seemed.

While everyone else disappeared into their own private space, Zach was simply left alone in the

darkness of the Sovereign Gate’s area. Even the Guardian of the Threshold was gone, leaving him

simply floating in the silent void with no way out until Panaxeth was done with the others.

As for the others, they’d all found themselves in front of the warped, twisted Guardian of Threshold,

though most did not see the same eye-covered humanoid that Zorian had. In Kyron’s case, for

instance, the Guardian grew another two pairs of arms while his torso split open into a giant vertical

mouth lined with predatory teeth. Nora saw the Guardian’s limbs lengthen while bone spikes erupted

from its head, causing it look like it had a bony sea urchin growing out of its neck. This initial

monstrous form was then gradually changed into a more inoffensive, human form through a process

of constant shapeshifting reminiscent of the one Zorian experienced.

After that, though, the experiences of different people wildly diverged. Not all received the offer of

making a contract with the primordial. Taiven and Nora were almost completely toyed with, for

instance. Panaxeth simply shifted between different forms while occasionally spouting total non-

sequiturs like ‘I like dogs’ or ‘your mother would be ashamed of you’, seemingly studying their

reactions. Daimen claimed that Panaxeth had never offered him anything, instead simply trying to

question him about what he knew about Zorian – his likes, motives and preferences. Something that

visibly infuriated his older brother, though Zorian was unsure how much of that was because

Panaxeth was basically trying to get him to betray his family and how much it was the fact that

Panaxeth clearly didn’t see him as important outside of being ‘Zorian’s brother’. If the situation

weren’t so dire, Zorian might have been amused about that.

It also quickly became clear that, even though everyone was reunited at roughly the same time, they

did not spend the same amount of time talking to Panaxeth. Some, like Zorian, only interacted with

the primordial for a short while before being dismissed. Others, especially ones that pretended to

actually consider its offer, spoke with the entity for quite a while before Panaxeth tired of them. The

primordial employed some kind of time dilation during its interaction with people, lengthening the

meeting with ones that seemed like they could be convinced, while spending only a token effort on

others.

This probably explained how it managed to convince Silverlake so relatively quickly. If she showed

the greatest amount of interest in its offer out of them all, the primordial would have likely extended

her meeting as much as it could. Plus, considering how powerful and experienced Silverlake was,

she was probably considered one of the most prioritized targets to begin with.

“Were you not worried that the primordial was reading your mind?” Zorian asked them, frowning. “I

mean, it seemed capable of lifting people’s appearances straight out of my head when I talked to it.

It was one of the big reasons I was so eager to get out of the meeting as much as possible.”

“He did no such thing while talking to me,” Xvim said, shaking his head. “Then again, Panaxeth did

not try to copy any people while talking to me. He just shifted from one generic form to another

throughout the entire talk.”

Zorian found it a little interesting how some people, like him, referred to Panaxeth as ‘it’, while Xvim

and others referred to the primordial as ‘he’. The cultists did call Panaxeth ‘He of the Flowing Flesh’,

so one could indeed argue that the entity was male in some sense, but it was debatable how much

normal gender applied to a monstrous shapechanger like that. The entity assumed a female form

when speaking to him, male form in front of others, and an aranea form when speaking to the

aranea… it clearly thought little of such things.

“I actually did ask the thing about that when it tried to shapeshift into Kana,” Kael said, pausing

slightly. “Well, more like I blew up at it and demanded an explanation. Sparingly, it actually gave me

one. It said no mind reading was taking place… it was ‘just’ watching everything we did inside the

time loop and taking note of people close to us. That’s probably why it tried to convince me while

looking like Kana instead of Namira, even though the latter would probably be more effective. Since

my wife had died long before the start of the time loop, Panaxeth had no idea what she looked like,

and thus couldn’t copy her appearance.”

“Yes, that is what he said to me as well,” Ilsa said. “He tried to tempt me with the secrets of true

creation, and I asked how he knew about that. He said the same thing he had to Kael, but he also

expanded on it a little bit. Panaxeth claims the Sovereign Gate is not made from a primordial like we

thought – it is more like an attachment, or maybe a shell, which must be bonded to a specific

primordial in order to work. This can potentially be any primordial, but currently it’s Panaxeth.”

“That’s why he could appear in front of us like that,” Zach said gloomily.

“Yes,” Ilsa said, nodding. “The Sovereign Gate somehow twists the primordial in question into the

time loop as we know it. In a very real sense, Panaxeth is the time loop… which means he is aware

of everything that occurs inside of him.”

“So Panaxeth is watching us even now?” Taiven said, sounding disturbed.

“Probably,” Ilsa shrugged. She seemed to take the idea in stride. Or maybe she’d just had more time

than the rest of them to come to terms with it.

Zorian was personally very disturbed by this discovery. How were they supposed to subvert the time

loop mechanism in order to leave this place, if the time loop was basically a sapient being that was

always watching them? It was quite likely that Panaxeth could actively sabotage any escape attempt

it did not like. Perhaps it was limited by the safeguards built into the Sovereign Gate, but those

safeguards probably wouldn’t protect people like him, who were trying to break the system.

No wonder Panaxeth claimed he was never leaving this place without its help. Back then, Zorian

thought that meant ‘without its help’, but perhaps what Panaxeth really meant was ‘without its

approval’…

“If he is that all-knowing, I wonder why he had not been more effective at tempting us,” Xvim mused.

“One would think he would have a far better grasp on our character if it could perceive everything we

did so far.”

“Awareness is not necessarily total awareness,” Orissa offered. “I am technically aware of everything

my bees do, but if you were to ask me about one particular bee, there is only so much I could tell

you.”

“The various elementals we consulted did say that primordials view us all like animals, maybe even

mere bugs,” Zach said. “How much do you really understand the sparrows living in the city or ants

digging up your garden? We may be greater than them, but they are still alien to us. Hell, Zorian can

read their minds and memories, and he still has trouble leading them from place to place without

using any magical coercion.”

“You’re talking about that one time he tried to literally herd cats, right?” Kael said, smiling slightly. “I

remember that one.”

“It wasn’t a serious attempt,” Zorian complained. “It was just an amusing idea I had when I was

bored.”

“This isn’t the time for this,” Alanic said, a little annoyed. “Zach brings up a good point with

primordials seeing us all as animals. You don’t discuss things with animals, you manipulate them

into doing what you want. We should be wary of trusting that creature too much. Although there is

probably some glimmer of truth in what it’s saying, I suspect it is willing to say anything, true or false,

if it thinks doing so will increase its chances of escaping its prison.”

“I don’t know. He seemed pretty honest and forthright to me,” Ilsa said, looking at Alanic. “Clearly

you also thought there was some value in listening to it, since you were one of the people that

managed to engage it in a lengthy conversation. What did you speak about, then?”

Ultimately, only a few people managed to keep their cool and get something substantial out of

Panaxeth. Alanic, Xvim, Orissa, Ilsa, Kyron and an aranea named Night Dream were the only ones

that managed to interest Panaxeth enough for him to engage them in a lengthy back-and-forth. It

made Zorian a little self-conscious to realize he had essentially bungled that meeting. He might have

gotten some important answers out of the primordial if he had been a little better at acting.

Then again, were these people really so good at acting or were they actually somewhat tempted by

Panaxeth’s offer, and the primordial could sense that in their exchange? He could tell that Ilsa, at the

very least, was lying when she claimed she had only been pretending to be interested in the

primordial’s offer. The others were harder to read.

In any case, Alanic did not appear in the slightest bit uncomfortable about being put on the spot like

that.

“We had a big talk about faith, risk-taking and the duty of the individual towards their community,”

Alanic said.

Zorian raised his eyebrow at him. So did a lot of other people, from what he could see.

“And you were scolding me and Zorian for not taking things seriously just a little while ago,” Kael

scoffed.

“It’s the truth,” Alanic said. “Rather than just refuse the creature, I asked it why I would ever agree to

such a deal. The consequences would be so apocalyptic, especially for Cyoria, that I couldn’t

imagine how this would be a good idea. Even if I was selfish to the extreme and only cared about

myself, the primordial was a threat to all of humanity.”

“Oh, I asked him the same thing,” Orissa interjected. “He said he had no intention of destroying the

world or menacing humanity. All he wanted, he said, was to be free and to free the rest of the

imprisoned primordials as well. He would only destroy those who tried to prevent him from achieving

those two goals.”

“Ha. Well, it said no such thing to me,” Alanic said. “Probably because it knew I would not believe

that. Instead, the primordial countered my concerns by telling me that the gods had left numerous

‘contingencies’ in regards to primordials, should they ever successfully escape. If I truly had faith in

the gods, it said, what was the harm in setting it free? The contract would be fulfilled the moment it

was out of prison, even if it died immediately afterwards. I should have faith in the divine and their

works, in which case there was nothing wrong with taking the deal, releasing it out of its prison and

then watching it die immediately afterwards.”

“Do these contingencies of the gods truly exist?” Zorian asked. He heard nothing about that, but

Alanic was a priest, so…

“I don’t know,” Alanic admitted. “Even if they did, it is said the gods imprisoned primordials because

they had trouble truly killing them. If the gods were incapable of dealing with them in person, I rather

doubt a mere contingency could do it. Clearly this Panaxeth did not believe this either, otherwise

why would it even make the offer? We then got into a lengthy philosophical discussion about what

constitutes true faith and various other things. I doubt you really want to hear about that.”

“Maybe later,” Zach said. “Orissa, you said you also talked to Panaxeth about what he’d do once

free?”

“Yes. Aside from what I already said, I think he alluded to these divine contingencies Alanic spoke

about at one point,” she said. “He mentioned that, in the process of tearing himself free from his

cage, he would likely end up ‘weakened and grievously wounded’, and that it would take him

centuries to fully recover. During that time, he would just hide somewhere and wait until he was fully

healed. He was suggesting that I had no reason to care about his goals, because by the time he was

ready to make his move, I would have died a long time ago.”

After some more back and forth, they confirmed some details with the other members of the group.

For instance, it seemed that nobody had been presented with an image of a person that had died

before the time loop had begun. In fact, the primordial didn’t even bother copying living relatives, if

the temporary looper hadn’t interacted with them within the bounds of the time loop. This led some

credence to his claim that he couldn’t read minds and ‘just’ relied on seeing everything that ever

happened in the time loop.

This done, they turned to the last three people who had spoken to Panaxeth at any real length.

Xvim, Kyron and Night Dream had all asked similar questions, however: they wanted to know the

details of what the contract with Panaxeth actually entailed. Thankfully, this appeared to be a topic

that Panaxeth was really eager to talk about.

“So if I understood you three correctly, the contract is as follows…” Zorian said. “You make a death

pact with Panaxeth, swearing that you would either free him within a month or die trying. He then

takes your soul and ‘incarnates’ it in the outside world. That is to say, he creates a brand new copy

of your body in the real world, at the start of the month, in effect physically ejecting you out of the

time loop. Included in the created body is some kind of kill switch that will kill you if Panaxeth is still

imprisoned at the end of the summer festival.”

“Yes,” Night Dream said, her magically produced voice clear and smooth. “It doesn’t matter whether

you tried your best or why you failed – if Panaxeth isn’t free by the end of the deadline, the ‘death

seal’ activates and kills you. No excuses.”

“And if Panaxeth is freed at any point before the deadline, this kill switch dissolves into nothingness

and you are free to do whatever you want?” Zorian asked.

“Yes, even if Panaxeth dies, our part of the agreement is done,” Xvim confirmed. “I asked several

variations of that question just to be sure, and he always answered the same. We only needed to get

him out, nothing more. Our original selves were not part of the agreement, either, and would not

suffer if we failed in our task.”

“Probably because their bodies hadn’t been created by Panaxeth, so he cannot place his ‘death

seal’ thingy on them,” Kyron remarked. “Even if he wanted to make them die with us, he cannot.”

“What stops you from taking the deal and then working against Panaxeth? Assuming you don’t mind

dying in a month, of course,” Alanic asked.

“When I asked a question along those lines, the shapeshifting asshole immediately ended our

conversation and sent me back to the group,” Kyron said. “I guess he really didn’t like that question.

From what I can tell, though, the answer is nothing. Nothing stops you from doing just that.”

“Then,” Kael said hesitantly, “do you think that Silverlake–”

Kyron let loose a short, loud laugh.

“Boy, get real!” he told Kael. “Do you think a selfish, self-centered bitch like that would agree to

sacrifice herself for our sake? For anyone’s sake!?”

Kael sighed, saying nothing.

A quiet murmur rippled throughout the entire group as they discussed the topic among themselves.

Zorian listened to it with half an ear while lost in his own thoughts. Truthfully, now that he had heard

about other people’s experiences with Panaxeth, her choice was… predictable. It wasn’t that they

had trusted her because they had thought that she was better than this, they had just never realized

making a deal like this was even an option. If Zorian had known about this before, he would have

been the first one to veto any involvement with her, no matter how useful she could have been to

their efforts.

And she had been very, very useful. Without any exaggeration, she was one of the pillars of the

group on which their entire plan rested. Zorian wasn’t even sure if they could do this without her.

Certainly, without Silverlake, their current exit plan was completely unworkable…

“I have to agree with Kyron,” Alanic said solemnly. “Silverlake did not keep her attitudes hidden, so

this decision should not surprise anyone here. You heard what everyone said on this meeting. The

primordial offers people a guaranteed way to save their lives, as opposed to the uncertain odds of

survival that we can offer her. She probably wouldn’t care if every single person in Cyoria ended up

dead as a result of Panaxeth’s release, and it might be centuries before the wider consequences of

his unsealing became apparent. Plus, there is no telling what kind of prize the creature offered her to

entice her further.”

“She was also clearly already interested in primordials even before the time loop. Including

Panaxeth’s prison, specifically,” Zorian said. “She might have felt more confident about being able to

come out on top when dealing with one of them.”

“But she’s immortal, right?” Taiven protested. “Shouldn’t she take the long view in this? Even if

Panaxeth takes several centuries to start wrecking everything, she’ll still be alive by that point!”

“You have to look at it from her eyes,” Zach said. He had calmed down greatly from his initial rage,

and was now thinking much more rationally about the situation. “What’s the alternative? Dying

immediately because you couldn’t get out of the time loop? That’s even worse.”

“But if Panaxeth remains sealed, her original self can continue to live in peace indefinitely,” Taiven

pointed out. “She’s risking the long-term future of her original in exchange for a little more life for

herself.”

“I don’t think she cares about that,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “That Silverlake is not her.”

“Yes. Did you ever notice she never created any simulacrums? Even when it would have been very

useful?” Zach pointed out. “I don’t think for a moment she was unable to learn the spell. And I don’t

think she would sabotage our attempts to escape from the time loop by not creating more skilled

manpower. I think she’s one of the people who can’t use them because they would freak out when

they realized their lives were fleeting and do something stupid.”

“Well, when you all put it like that, why did we ever agree to work with her in the first place?” Kyron

suddenly demanded, throwing his hands in the air in discontent.

“Yeah!” one of Xvim’s academic friends piped in. “She was a bad idea right from the start! Whose

bright idea was to include her, anyway?”

“What was the alternative?” Xvim challenged, alternating his gaze between Kyron and the other

speaker. “Silverlake was brought into the group because she had critical skills that no one else

possessed. The only reason we got as far as we did was because we had her working along with us.

Even if she betrayed us in the end, it’s hard to say whether we would have been better off without

her.”

No one had anything to say to that.

“Zorian, you’re the only one Panaxeth told anything related to Silverlake,” Zach said. “Can you tell us

anything else?”

“All he said was that someone had already taken his offer, so convincing me didn’t matter anymore,”

Zorian said. He was the only one Panaxeth had felt the need to tell that. “I had no idea what that

meant back then, but when I saw Silverlake was missing…”

“Yeah,” Zach said, clacking his tongue. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. So,

what now? Now we have two hostile loopers to deal with once we get out of the time loop?”

Zorian had to admire Zach’s spirit sometimes. Even now, with all their plans being thrown into total

disarray, he was still confident they would get out of this alive. It was nice to have someone like that,

sometimes.

“Panaxeth’s statement was a little confusing, but I think that’s right. He was implying that Red Robe

had also taken his offer and made a contract with him in order to leave the time loop. Presumably,

this is why he spent so much time optimizing the invasion. His very life depends on its success.

Presumably, once outside, Silverlake will work with him to make sure Panaxeth’s release goes off as

smoothly as possible.”

“Why does Silverlake accepting his offer mean there is no point in convincing you, though?” Kael

asked. “You’d think Panaxeth would want as many agents as possible.”

“Probably because every time he transports someone out the gate becomes barred again,” Zorian

said. “Remember, the whole point of gathering the Key was that the gate was inexplicably barred,

even though it shouldn’t have been. ‘The Controller has already left’, Guardian of the Threshold told

us. That probably means that when Panaxeth got Red Robe out of the time loop, it got stuck. The

same probably happened now. Even if Panaxeth wanted to transport more than one person, he

couldn’t.”

“But you still have the Key,” Ilsa pointed out.

“We do,” Zach confirmed.

“So you can probably just unbar the gate again,” Ilsa stated.

“Probably,” Zach agreed.

“They’d have to be pretty stupid to take any of us into the Sovereign Gate again,” Alanic said

pitilessly. “I would never do so in their place.”

“All of us present refused that thing’s deal,” Kyron pointed out, a little incensed.

“Or maybe we were just too slow and Silverlake hammered out her deal before we had a chance to

do the same,” Xvim said. “I agree with Alanic. Now that Silverlake betrayed us, the pressure on the

remaining people is all the greater. It’s a pointless risk.”

Zorian watched the argument in silence, not knowing what to say.

This was going to be a long evening…

- break -

After finding out what everyone had experienced in the Sovereign Gate, Zach and Zorian departed

from the Noveda Estate and went to ransack Silverlake’s dimensional refuge for any clues. Of

course, Zorian fully intended to also steal any magical secrets or notable resources he found there.

Since Silverlake had betrayed them so utterly, he did not feel bad about robbing her blind in the

slightest.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Silverlake’s spite and paranoia knew no bounds. When they finally

managed to subvert her defenses and break into her pocket dimension, they found it utterly

wrecked. It had been reduced to a smoking crater for quite some time before they arrived, most

likely because some dead man’s switch had activated when she died and destroyed everything.

Zorian left a couple of simulacrums to sift through the wreckage for anything of value, but he didn’t

have much hope they would find anything. The destruction was quite thorough.

The only things that survived relatively intact was a curious arrangement of stones that was

apparently responsible for powering her pocket dimension. He had long wondered how she was

doing that, since the location itself could not support the dimensional magic she was using to isolate

it from the rest of the world. Now he knew. Each of the heavy linking stones, which were built right

into the walls of her hideout to disguise them better, had a matching counterpart deep in the

underworld below her base. The underworld stones siphoned ambient mana from the Dungeon and

sent it straight into Silverlake’s hideout through the paired stones in the pocket dimension.

He supposed that if he ever wanted to destroy Silverlake’s pocket dimension, he now knew a really

easy way to do it. He just had to wreck the mana siphoning stones in the Dungeon below her

sanctuary and the whole place would soon fall apart on its own.

In any case, with this matter currently being dealt with, Zach and Zorian turned their attention

towards the next thing that had to be done as soon as possible.

They had to go back to the Sovereign Gate and talk to the Guardian of the Threshold.

There was danger in doing that, of course. However, it had to be done. They had to confirm their

suspicions. First, they had to see if the Guardian would still be there at all when they came back,

since it had gone missing when they had last left the Sovereign Gate. Secondly, they had to see if

the gate really was barred again like they suspected. If so, a lot of their speculation would be all but

confirmed.

Finally, they had to see if the Guardian could shed some light on what happened during their last

visit. While it had seemed like nothing more than an automated puppet in the past, there was clearly

something more complex going on in regards to that thing.

Only the two of them would be going there this time, of course. Considering Panaxeth completely

ignored Zach the last time around and told Zorian he would not bother with him in the future, they

probably wouldn’t be seeing him on this visit. Even if they did, though, Zorian was far less afraid of

him now that he knew he couldn’t just reach into his head and start editing things. Whatever

restrictions the primordial was laboring under, they clearly prevented him from coercing people into

anything.

When they entered the Sovereign Gate, they were relieved to see the familiar figure of the Guardian

of the Threshold floating in front of them.

“Welcome, Controller,” the Guardian greeted.

“So Panaxeth didn’t break everything with his little visit,” Zach commented, loudly exhaling in

satisfaction. “That’s great. Finally some good news.”

“Yes,” Zorian agreed. He turned towards the floating humanoid of light, giving him a complex look.

What was this thing really? “Guardian, is the gate still open?”

They waited for several seconds, wondering why it took the Guardian so long to answer that. Usually

he was really prompt with his answers, only occasionally waiting while it looked up something in the

background. As the seconds ticked by, though, they realized he wasn’t checking up on things before

giving them an answer.

Instead, the Guardian ignored Zorian’s question completely.

Uh oh…

“Hey Guardian! Is the gate still open?” Zach said, repeating Zorian’s question.

“No, Controller. The gate is barred,” the Guardian immediately answered.

Zach and Zorian shared a complex look with each other. On one hand, they just confirmed their

speculation about what happened. This was good. It meant they were of the right track. On the other

hand…

“Guardian, why did you answer his question and not mine?” Zorian asked the glowing humanoid.

But the Guardian ignored his question, just like he did the previous one. In fact, Zorian realized that,

although the Guardian was facing them, he was subtly tilted towards Zach. It was like he was

completely ignoring Zorian’s very existence.

Just like he had been ignoring the temporary loopers in the past.

“Guardian, why are you only responding to me and not him?” Zach asked, a bit of frustration

bleeding into his voice.

“I only respond to the Controller,” the Guardian stated placidly.

“I knew it,” Zorian said quietly, followed by a small sigh.

Zach stared at the Guardian, getting visibly more and more upset as time went by. Zorian just felt a

sinking feeling of defeat, instead. When it rained, it poured.

“This is bullshit,” Zach stated angrily, pointing with his finger at Zorian. “He entered this space on his

own, by activating his marker. Only a controller can do that!”

“Yes,” the Guardian agreed. “He is an anomaly. Those happen sometimes. Something or someone

has managed to get past the safeguards and disrupted the integrity of the mechanism. The anomaly

can access Controller privileges even though he is not one. I am unable to do anything about that at

the moment, but do not worry – the mistake will be corrected at the end of this cycle, when the world

is recreated again.”

Lovely. Zorian did not need a detailed explanation to understand what the Guardian was implying.

“But why now?” Zach demanded. “How did you figure out he was the anomaly all of a sudden? He

had been coming and going here for ages now!”

“Yes. Regretful,” Guardian said blandly. “However, you have presented me with the Key recently,

which triggered a complete analysis of the existing situation. During this inspection, the anomaly was

identified and correction procedures were scheduled to be performed at the first possible

opportunity.”

“Why?” Zach asked. “What is it about the Key that triggers this?”

“Activating the Key signifies that something has gone wrong with the time loop mechanism,” The

Guardian answered, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course a thorough check

of everything is in order.”

“It does? You never mentioned this when we asked you about the Key,” Zach stated accusingly.

The Guardian ignored the statement. Zorian was actually a little taken aback by this, since it meant

the Guardian had probably kept them deliberately in the dark about that when they had talked to him

in the past.

He supposed it made sense. The key was a security measure meant to confirm the Controller’s

identity. It made sense not to discuss the details of its operation unless the Guardian felt he had to,

for some reason.

“What about those privileges I claimed, then?” Zach asked. “What does that get me?”

“It affirms your status as the one true Controller and locks out all the other pretenders that may be

walking about,” the Guardian said.

“What!?” Zach protested incredulously. “That’s it? No new functions or abilities or anything like that?”

“As a Controller, you already have all the privileges,” the Guardian told him. “You have simply

ensured others do not infringe on this.”

“Why can Zorian even access this place, then?” Zach demanded.

Hey!

“He is an anomaly,” the Guardian said.

“These ‘privileges’ are such a rip-off,” Zach complained. “It doesn’t even do what it’s supposed to

properly.”

“I’m sorry,” the Guardian said, sounding honestly apologetic. “He’s a very frustrating anomaly.”

‘And thank the gods for that,’ Zorian thought.

He wasn’t panicking, strangely enough. He didn’t know why. Maybe because he already faced a

very dire situation today and was rather emotionally drained at the moment, but finding out he was

going to be deleted at the end of the month only brought a dull mixture of dread and determination to

his mind.

So what if Silverlake had betrayed them? So what if Panaxeth was actively working against him? So

what if he would get erased at the end of the month? Hadn’t they already planned to make an

escape attempt in this restart?

They just had to make sure it worked.

He looked over at Zach, who had stopped arguing with the Guardian and was instead looking at

Zorian like he was a dead man. A mixture of horror and guilt was etched clearly into his face.

“Don’t beat yourself over this,” Zorian told Zach. His voice was so calm and even that even he was

surprised how confident he sounded. “There was nothing else we could have done. You heard what

the Guardian said – the moment we presented the Key to him, I was marked for erasure. It was

always a given that we would do that the moment we gathered all the pieces. We should be grateful

it was so difficult and took us that long to do it, or else we would have ended up in this situation at a

much earlier and far less favorable restart.”

“But, Zorian!” Zach protested. “You, you…”

“This just means I need to get out of here before this month ends. It’s the same situation the rest of

the group is laboring under, really,” Zorian said. “Don’t tell me you’ve already given up?”

“N-No… no…” Zach said slowly, taking a few deep breaths. “Damn it. I really hate this.”

“Ask the Guardian if the Key still works. Can you unbar the gate again?”

He could, it turned out.

“Do you want to do it now?” the Guardian asked.

“No!” Zach shouted at it. “No. Do nothing until I tell you, you useless thing.”

“As you wish,” the Guardian said peacefully, completely oblivious to their emotional turmoil.

There was a few seconds of silence as neither Zach nor Zorian said anything.

“Well…” said Zorian finally. “We should probably end this for now. We need to come here later to

ask more questions, but I don’t think either of us is in the right frame of mind to do so at the

moment.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Zach gloomily agreed. “I just–”

Suddenly, the Guardian started convulsing again.

“Oh, not this shit again!” Zach protested in an exasperated tone.

Zorian made no moves to exit the Sovereign Gate this time. He probably couldn’t even if he wanted

to, but this time he actually wanted to have a talk with Panaxeth, so he didn’t even try. Interestingly,

Panaxeth did not bother to separate Zach from Zorian this time around and simply possessed the

convulsing Guardian in front of them both. The glowing humanoid erupted into a forest of blood-red

branches and tentacles before shuddering and contracting into a more human-like mass. It then

quickly shapeshifted into the same female form that it had chosen for Zorian the last time they

spoke. It did so far quicker than last time, apparently having gotten more proficient with the process.

It took a step forward, seemingly intending to walk over to them, before pausing and stopping in

place.

“Hello, Zorian,” Panaxeth said in a pleasant female voice. “We meet again.”

“I thought you said you would not bother talking to me again,” Zorian immediately pointed out. “That

it was a one-time offer.”

“Bah, I told you it was just playing hard to get,” Zach stated.

“Getting past the safeguards on this mechanism is not an easy thing to do,” Panaxeth said. “It is not

easy for me to appear before you like this. I meant what I said last time, but I decided you are more

interesting than I first realized.”

“Last time you didn’t even dare show your face in front of me,” Zach said loudly in a challenging

tone, folding his hands over his chest.

“As the Controller, you are especially well protected from any tampering,” Panaxeth said, shifting its

attention towards Zach for a moment. “And you can leave at any time. You do not require my help,

nor am I able to stop you from leaving. You are of no use to me.”

“But here you are, showing yourself in front of me anyway,” Zach pointed out.

“I need to conserve my power,” Panaxeth said. “Isolating you in a separate space is costly and

unnecessary. I do not care if you hear us.”

The female form Panaxeth was wearing turned its attention back to Zorian, staring at him intently.

“You still have a chance to survive this,” Panaxeth said. “I have managed to stop the Guardian from

rescinding all your Controller privileges. Wreck the Controller’s mind as much as you’re able, use the

key to unbar the gate, and I will incarnate you in the outside world. I do not even ask that you make

a contract with me. Grievously sabotaging the Controller and preventing him from exiting the time

loop will be payment enough for your salvation.”

Zach actually floated a few steps back when he heard that.

“You don’t want me as an agent?” Zorian asked, frowning.

“I already have two of them. That’s more than enough,” Panaxeth said. “If I can ensure that the

Controller dies here when the time loop collapses upon itself, it will be far more valuable to me than

any additional number of agents.”

Neither Zach nor Zorian said anything for a few seconds, but Zorian was furiously thinking about

things. If Panaxeth was so desperate to take Zach out of the picture… that probably meant this

entire time loop had been made specifically to help him find a reliable way to stop Panaxeth’s

release. Even if Zach could not remember so, the two of them were mortal enemies.

“Before I helped Zach gather all the pieces of the Key, you were already winning,” Zorian realized.

“You had already sent one of the temporary loopers out as your agent, and Zach had mostly

forgotten his mission to stop you. He only had vague feelings to guide him in what he must do. Even

if he figured out how to come here, the gate was barred and he couldn’t leave.”

“Yes. It would have been better for me if the Key had never been found,” Panaxeth admitted readily.

“However, I am the very embodiment of adaptability. I do not blame you for looking out for your best

interests. I simply recruited one of you as my agent, thinking that was the best way to make use of

the situation. It was only later that I found out how capable you are at mind invasion, and how the

original plan could still be salvaged.”

“You didn’t know that before?” Zorian asked.

“I’m always watching,” Panaxeth said. “Everything, everywhere. But my consciousness is a lot like

yours, in that I can’t pay attention to every little detail I see. When you observe an anthill, you

perceive a lot, but can you really remember what one particular ant does at any point of time? But I

remember it all with perfect clarity, and I can review it all later as I wish. Just like you can remember

things with perfect clarity when you want to. See? We’re a lot more alike than you might think,

Zorian.”

The female shape Panaxeth was using as his avatar smiled. It was a bright, sunny smile that was

probably meant to put him at ease but which Zorian found inexplicably terrifying.

“We’re both trapped in this cage, doing anything we can, even distasteful things, in order to get out,”

Panaxeth continued. “Do you think I want to destroy your city? Its destruction is simply an

unfortunate consequence of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I never asked your kind to

build a city around me. Just like you are willing to kill your outside self to live, I am willing to

obliterate everything around me to get free. It is not my fault my fatality count is higher than yours.”

“I will die if I don’t get out of here in time,” Zorian pointed out. “You won’t.”

“The cage that binds me is torture you can barely imagine,” Panaxeth countered. “Imagine being

entombed for centuries, alive, but starving and thirsting, and unable to move a finger. If that was

your fate, would you not do anything in your power to get free?”

That… was a good argument, actually. Zorian had nothing to say to that.

“And then there is him,” said Panaxeth, suddenly pointing towards Zach.

“Me?” Zach protested. “I’m just sitting here quietly, listening to you two talk. What about me?”

“I am heavily restricted in regards to the Controller and cannot speak about things freely, but I can

tell you this – no matter what you think about that person, no matter how friendly he seems, you are

ultimately enemies. In the end, one has to kill the other.”

“That’s… That’s bullshit!” Zach exploded. “What the hell do you mean by that!?”

“He is good at pretending,” Panaxeth said, not even bothering to look at him. “However, you should

have noticed the signs by now. Don’t let your emotions overpower your reason.”

Angry and ignored, Zach tried to ram himself into Panaxeth’s form, even though he knew no fighting

was possible here and that this was probably a bad idea.

Panaxeth’s form simply blurred for a moment, causing Zach to harmlessly pass through it.

“I have said all I that needs to be said,” Panaxeth said. “Make the right choice, Zorian. You have until

the end of the restart to make a decision. I will be waiting.”

Then they were outside, back in their real bodies. They hadn’t even activated the exit function in

their marker – it was another thing that the primordial could apparently do on its own initiative.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” Zach raged, throwing around everything in the vicinity to vent his

frustration. Zorian winced when one of the sensitive instruments that the facility staff used to study

the Sovereign Gate impacted the nearby wall and broke apart. That was going to be a real bitch to

explain to Krantin. “Damn it all to hell! Why has everything suddenly going so wrong!?”

“Zach, you really need to work on your temper,” Zorian said, thrusting his hand towards another

device Zach just threw across the room. It immediately ceased flying through the air, stopping just

before it hit one of the cabinets.

Zach paced around the room angrily for a while, not saying anything but thankfully no longer

destroying expensive equipment either. After a while he marched up to Zorian with heavy,

purposeful steps and grasped him by the shoulders with both of his hands.

“Zorian,” he began, “you don’t really believe that nonsense Panaxeth was spouting there at the end,

do you?”

Zorian stared at him, stony-faced, for several seconds.

He knew that there was something to Panaxeth’s accusations. Zach’s mind… it clearly had been

tampered with somehow. Maybe by Red Robe. Maybe by the angels, when they had given him his

task. Maybe by both. Everything pointed towards that conclusion. Even if Zach was genuinely

friendly and wished him nothing but good, there could be all sorts of restrictions, compulsions or

contingencies placed in there, just waiting for some trigger to activate them. Perhaps once they were

out of the time loop, the smiling boy in front of him would suddenly turn hostile and try to kill him for

no reason. He still remembered how quickly Princess switched from seeing them as mortal enemies

to following one of them like an overgrown puppy, just because they managed to scratch her a little

with her control dagger.

However, he also knew it would be a mistake to say that out loud. For one thing, Zach just listened

to Panaxeth telling Zorian to scramble his mind in exchange for a ticket to outside. In light of that,

any argument Zorian might use to convince Zach to let him rummage inside his mind would

seem very suspect.

“No,” Zorian said. “I don’t believe that at all.”

Zach stared at him for a second before finally letting go of his shoulders and straightening himself a

little.

“Good,” he said, patting Zorian on the shoulder in a friendly manner. “That’s good. We can’t let that

thing divide us like that. We need to trust each other, now most of all.”

“Right,” Zorian said. He actually agreed with that. “And by the way? You’re the one explaining to

Krantin why you totally trashed the room like that.”

Zach froze for a second and then looked around him, assessing damage.

“I guess you’re right,” he said with a groan. “I really do need to work on my temper.”

Chapter 091

A Path Paid in Blood

“This isn’t going to work.”

Zorian stopped staring at the pile of blueprints and notebooks in front of him and looked at the

speaker. It was Xvim. He and Alanic had snuck up to him while his attention was absorbed into his

task and were currently staring at him expectantly.

Zorian tapped his pen on the table a couple of times before throwing it aside and leaning back in his

chair. Perhaps it would be a good idea to take a break. His work had stalled for a while now.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he told his old mentor.

“We can’t keep going like this,” Xvim clarified. “This path we’re on… it’s not going to work. When we

planned this out, we were counting on having Silverlake on our side. Now we don’t, and no amount

of increased enthusiasm and minor adjustments is going to make up for it. I know you’re still under

the impression of what Panaxeth told you, but something has to change. At this rate we’re simply

blundering into an obvious failure.”

Zorian stared at Xvim for a second before glancing at Alanic. However, the scarred battle priest was

silent, simply staring back at him without saying a word. Clearly he agreed with Xvim’s words, then.

They had probably discussed things between each other before approaching him.

He looked around the room instead of immediately answering. It gave him a way to stall and gather

his thoughts, but he was also curious about people’s reactions to the conversation. They were inside

one of the Noveda estate’s rooms, and there were quite a few people gathered here. Most of them

pretended to be absorbed into their own work, but Zorian could tell that all of them were paying close

attention to what was happening.

Well, except for Zach. His fellow time traveler was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his eyes

closed, trying to sense the divine energies of his divine blessing and Controller marker. Zorian was

not sure why he was doing that, to be honest. Both he and Zach had already succeeded at

perceiving these divine energies, and it was unlikely he would develop the skill much in what little

time they had left before the end of the restart. On top of that, they had basically given up on trying

to modify the temporary markers. There was little point to that now.

He took a deep breath but resisted the urge to sigh. They had informed the whole group about their

second encounter with Panaxeth and what it meant for Zorian. Strangely, the group took another

bout of bad news in stride. In fact, the knowledge that Zorian now shared fates with them seemed to

significantly improve the mood of the group. He was one of them now, and the fact that he didn’t

panic and break down after finding out this was his last chance to live seemed to inspire them

somewhat and calm their fears. They worked harder, grumbled less, and were less dubious about

his motives and logic.

For a while, he thought that would be enough… that with some renewed enthusiasm and some

clever workaround they would be able to make up for Silverlake’s absence and proceed as planned.

However, Xvim and Alanic were right. This wasn’t going to work.

They needed a new plan.

“What are you suggesting?” Zorian asked them.

“First of all, we should tell Krantin and his team that we’re time travelers,” Xvim said.

Zorian cocked his head to the side curiously. Not really what he was expecting to hear.

“Wouldn’t that be rather counterproductive?” Zorian asked. “Krantin and his team have been

remarkably cooperative with us, all things considered. If they knew the truth, I imagine their

enthusiasm for helping us could only plummet as a response.”

“I said we should tell them we’re time travelers, not the full and total truth,” Xvim said. “Truthfully,

they already suspect this. The documents we are providing them with are too similar to their own

existing work for that to escape their notice. They have been talking amongst themselves about our

identity for a while now, and the most common theory is that we’re literally from the future. It isn’t that

far from the truth, really.”

“They actually hit upon such a crazy theory as the most likely one?” Zorian asked, surprised.

“They’re working in a time magic research facility,” Xvim said. “Even though actual time travel is said

to be impossible, the topic is likely to come up with some regularity among the staff. They are being

paid to push the boundaries of time magic as much as they can, after all.”

Zorian stayed quiet for a few seconds, mulling things over. He supposed the idea was workable, all

things considered, and it might eliminate some of the inefficiencies they’d encountered when working

with Krantin and his team. However…

“Although this would be useful, I’m not really sure it would do that much,” Zorian said finally. “The

facility staff is already working hard on the project of turning the imperial orb into a Black Room.

Even with their limited information, they seem appreciative enough for the funding and opportunities

we’ve given them. I doubt we could drive them to work harder with this.”

“No, probably not,” Xvim agreed, propping his elbows on the table and folding his fingers into a

triangle shape in front of him. “This is merely an attempt to make them fine with the second step of

the plan.”

“Which is?” Zorian prompted, feeling just a little bit apprehensive all of a sudden.

“Kidnapping everyone skilled and possibly useful and forcing them to work for us,” Xvim stated

calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Must resist the urge to sigh. Must resist the urge to sigh. Must resist…

Zorian rubbed his chin in a frustrated manner before focusing back on the two people in front of him.

Alanic was still not saying anything. They were both staring at him and waiting for a response.

“And just how–” Zorian began.

“Through any means necessary,” Xvim said, cutting him off. “Blackmail. Threats of death and bodily

harm. Rampant use of mind magic.”

“My mind magic is not that capable,” Zorian said, frowning. “The kind of work we need from them

has never been done before. They would need to work with us to invent entirely new spells and

rituals.”

“I know,” Xvim said.

“I can’t force someone to perform creative work for me with mind magic,” Zorian pointed out. “I don’t

think anyone can. At best we’d get a bunch of dazed zombies.”

“They don’t know that, though,” Xvim said. “Mind magic is terrifying, even for mages, and few people

are experienced enough to guess your limits. Ignoring that, what you can do is already terrifying

enough for most people. If you demonstrated your memory manipulation abilities, most people would

be very intimidated. Even I’m afraid of you sometimes, and I’m both familiar with your limitations and

relatively certain you will not target me with your abilities. Finally, even if someone is not intimidated

by your ability, you can always use your memory modification abilities as a limited retry button for

convincing people. You’ve used your powers in that manner before, I am told.”

“But only on enemies,” stressed Zorian.

“And I’m very grateful you retain that sense of morality and restraint in regards to your powers,” Xvim

said patiently. “But we’re running out of time and desperate times call for desperate measures. Don’t

think we’re just selfishly asking you to discard your ideals. This is a burden we’re all willing to take

upon our shoulders.”

Zorian gave him a surprised look.

“Somebody will need to keep this mass of resentful, forcibly recruited mages in line and focused on

their duties instead of plotting our downfall,” Xvim said. “That’s going to be our job. Your job is simply

to gather the people we need and intimidate them into cooperating with us, however reluctantly.”

Zorian stared at the man for a while, considering what he had been told. Xvim was essentially saying

that all or most of the other temporary loopers already agreed that this was an acceptable course of

action. That they were just going to… kidnap random people and force them into working for them.

And here Zorian was thinking he was being too carefree about reaching for the darker, unethical

methods to tackle their problems.

“Well,” he said. “I see we’re turning into a proper villainous organization. All we need now is a

mystical artifact that will allow us to remake the world in our image and we’re set to go.”

Xvim’s lips twitched slightly.

“If you really think about it,” he said, “a large group of people armed with knowledge of things to

come and all the things we’ve gathered in the time loop would be more than enough to–”

“Please don’t,” Zorian implored him. “Just… tell me once again how this is supposed to work.”

“Alright,” Xvim said, reaching into his bag and handing him a map with a bunch of locations marked

on it. Colorful paper notes densely filled with text were pinned next to each of the indicated locations.

“Our main problem right now is that we don’t have enough time,” Xvim continued after Zorian had a

chance to glance at the map. “The only way we’re going to get that is by pushing our Black Room

modification project to its utter limit. Therefore, we should drop virtually everything and focus on that.

However, the biggest problem the project has is the lack of qualified mages to work on it. Most of us

are not really qualified to help with it. However, this facility is not the only one of its kind. There are

other facilities in other countries, and though they have not gotten as far as the one in Eldemar, their

staff is no less qualified than Krantin and his researchers – they just suffer from a lack of funding and

opportunities.”

The places on the map marked with blue upturned triangles were locations of all known Black Room

projects in Altazia, Zorian realized. He knew about these, of course. They had been making use of

their facilities for quite some time now. Not just in the sense that they were using them to extend

their time in the restarts, either. They had long ago raided these places for any information about

time magic, as well as handed them collected research notes from other facilities to see if they would

come up with something novel when presented with such information. Although these initiatives

were moderately successful, they had stopped yielding results by now, and so they no longer

bothered with them. They simply made use of the facilities in each restart and then left them alone.

Although these places were much smaller than the time magic research facility beneath Cyoria,

there was a fair number of them. If they forcibly took all their staff, that would be a lot of people. Plus,

there might be some useful equipment there, now that he was thinking about it.

If they were raiding these places for people, they might as well take everything that wasn’t nailed

down as well.

“So we just raid those places, taking everything and everyone in sight,” Zorian said, clacking his

tongue. “What about those who just won’t cooperate, no matter what carrot and stick we use? Kill

them?”

“Push them through a portal to Blantyrre and strand them in the jungle for a while,” Xvim said. “I

think most will reconsider after a few days, but if not, they can just spend the rest of the month

there.”

And probably get eaten by a flying snake or something, Zorian thought, though he did not say it out

loud.

“In any case, with this sudden influx of new people and with Krantin’s hopeful acceptance of our time

traveler story, we can then move on to the next step,” said Xvim, handing him another map.

This one was a very detailed map of the underworld beneath Cyoria, centered around the time

magic research facility. However, the facility in the map Xvim gave him was larger than the one that

currently existed beneath their feet. Much, much larger. It was a huge, sprawling complex that

circled the Hole like a giant torus and then extended into the surrounding land through a spider web

of rooms and corridors.

Zorian gave Xvim a dubious look.

“There is no way this kind of development can be hidden from the city,” Zorian said dubiously.

“Never mind Krantin and his reaction, this would bring the Eldemar military on our heads. Do we

really have enough influence to make the city authorities overlook this sort of thing?”

“Yes, that… that is certainly a problem,” Xvim tapped his fingers together and looked away uneasily

for a second. “We think we have a solution for that, though.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Zorian asked rhetorically. “Can it really be worse than the whole

‘mass kidnapping’ thing?”

“We should work with the Esoteric Order of the Celestial Dragon and its leaders,” Xvim told him.

Zorian scowled at the suggestion. He had nothing but disgust and contempt for the Cult of the World

Dragon. At least Ibasans had a relatively understandable goal of sabotaging their national enemies.

The cultists were traitors and seemed to operate purely on a mixture of delusion and insatiable

greed for power. Most of the lower-level members didn’t even know what exactly they were fighting

for. Plus, he could never quite forget the sight of the shifter children they sacrificed in order to crack

open Panaxeth’s prison.

He did not like the idea of cooperating with these people in the slightest.

“You can’t be serious,” Zorian told him, voice tinged with annoyance.

“I really am serious… and not just because they can help us make the city authorities look the other

way while we rearrange the local underworld in our favor. With the loss of Silverlake, we have lost

our expert on the primordials and their cages. Aside from Silverlake, the cult’s leaders are probably

the people most qualified to help us understand Panaxeth’s prison… and how to exploit it to get out

of the time loop,” Xvim explained.

“We already took everything they had,” Zorian pointed out.

In fact, they had been exceptionally thorough in raiding the cult for every secret they had. Zorian

may have compunctions about delving into the minds of random people to steal their secrets, but he

had no such compunctions about the cultists. He could not claim to have gotten every scrap of

knowledge they had, since he could only look for things if he knew what to look for, but he was quite

sure he got everything truly important out of them.

“What they already have, yes,” Xvim said. “But not what they could have, if we teach them all we

know and give them a chance to look at the problem with increased skills and perspective.”

Zorian’s eyes widened in realization.

“You want to teach them!?” he asked, aghast at the idea.

“Everything, yes,” Xvim confirmed, nodding. “We would not inform them about the time loop, of

course, but other than that? We will bring them into our improved Black Room and teach them

everything we can about divination, about dimensionalism and about the structure of the primordial

prison in the Hole. We will then let them analyze the structure and either ask them to answer our

questions or you can just rip the answers straight out of their minds. It depends on how cooperative

they are and what is more convenient.”

Zorian remained silent for a while. On one hand, he really didn’t like the idea of teaching these

people anything, especially since that would involve them being close by for several months – plenty

of time for things to go seriously wrong. On the other hand, he found the idea of the cultists

unknowingly helping them get out of the time loop so they could sabotage their plans in the real

world to be rather amusing. And Xvim was right that, other than Silverlake, these people were the

ones most familiar with the primordial’s prison. They had been studying it for quite a while now in

their attempt to open it, after all.

There was, of course, a small matter of why in the world would the cult leaders agree to work with

them on this. However, they were already considering kidnapping people and using blackmail and

intimidation to make them cooperate, so this was probably not as difficult of an issue as it appeared.

They just had to point out that the invasion could not possibly succeed unless Zach and

Zorian allowed it to happen, and then prove their words with a demonstration of their power.

He looked at Alanic, who had still not said anything up until now.

“I’m surprised you’re willing to entertain this idea,” Zorian told him.

“I was willing to work with Silverlake, wasn’t I?” Alanic said. “She may not have done anything

particularly heinous in front of you, but I assure you she has done plenty of odious deeds in the past.

I understand the necessity. It would be playing with fire, but it isn’t like this is the first time we’re

doing that. Isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” Zorian said quietly. He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

Alanic never really talked about his past with Silverlake, or of his time before he became a priest.

Zorian had long figured out by now that the scarred battle-priest had been a very different man back

then, and did a lot of things he later regretted, so he refrained from pushing the man on the topic.

Alanic had been incredibly helpful towards him throughout all these restarts, and Zorian felt it would

be ungrateful of him to dredge up painful memories and old grudges unless he really had to.

If Alanic had some information about Silverlake that he felt was important, he would have told them

about it by now.

After a while, Zorian picked up a pen and threw it at Zach’s head. Though he had his eyes firmly

closed, Zach immediately raised his hand and caught the pen out of the air before opening his eyes.

“How much did you hear?” Zorian asked him.

“Most of it,” Zach admitted.

“And?” Zorian prompted. “What do you think?”

“I don’t have any better idea,” Zach said with a shrug.

Neither did Zorian, in all honesty.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true…

“Alright,” said Zorian, rising from his seat. “I guess we’re doing this, then. However, I think a slight

modification is in order.”

“Slight, huh?” Zach said with a grin.

“If we’re going to get the maximum amount of time out of the modified Black Room, the extra

manpower is not enough,” said Zorian. “We need a dimensionalism mage of the highest caliber if

we’re going to get truly spectacular results.”

“So? Those don’t exactly grow on trees,” Zach pointed out, throwing the pen back at him. “Where

are we going to find one of those?”

Zorian caught the pen flying at him with practiced ease.

“How attached are you to that crown we took from Quatach-Ichl?” Zorian asked Zach with a knowing

smile.

Zach’s expression immediately fell.

“Oh, you can’t be serious…” Zach complained.

Oh, but he was. He really was.

“Come on,” Zorian told him, motioning him to get up from the floor. “Let’s go talk to our favorite lich.”

- break -

Somewhere in Eldemar, a field was burning.

Two masked teenagers were engaged in a vicious fight against an ancient Ibasan lich, and the

landscape around them was devastated in their passing. Once this had been a wheat field in full

bloom, but it was now just an ashen land covered in craters. Broken remains of undead servants and

golems littered the ground, and strange rock formations rose out of the ground in places where the

two sides tried to entomb each other in solid stone.

Somewhere out there, Zorian mused, a farmer was going to be very devastated when he saw what

had happened to his harvest.

This was the third time he and Zach had clashed with the lich like this in the last few days. However,

this was fine as far as Zorian was concerned. He considered this to be simply a part of their

negotiation with Quatach-Ichl, rather than as a waste of time. They were proving to the lich that they

were legitimate threats and that he should take them seriously. Earlier, when they had taken the

crown from him in this restart, they had done it through an ambush and by employing something that

could be dismissed as a mere trick. Through these fights, they were showing Quatach-Ichl there was

more to them than that.

Quatach-Ichl had never stopped looking for them all this time, of course. He had no idea it was Zach

and Zorian who had stolen his crown, since they had worn disguises when they had ambushed him

and covered their tracks extremely well, but he had somehow managed to find out about the

existence of their group in general. He seemed to have identified Xvim, Alanic, Ilsa and Kyron as the

leaders of the group, possibly because they interacted with the authorities relatively often. He had

tried to target them by ransacking their homes and such, but this hadn’t been very effective. All

temporary loopers had vacated their usual homes by now, and were not that easy to catch. Plus, he

couldn’t be too brazen about wrecking things or he would put his own invasion plans into danger.

This sort of situation must have been rather frustrating for the ancient lich, because he had attacked

them immediately when they had shown up in front of him again. He hadn’t even given them a

chance to speak! Rude.

A giant, scintillating ball of red light screamed through the air towards Zorian. He thrust his hand at it,

causing a conical wave of barely visible rainbow light to wash over it. It unraveled instantly, revealing

a dimmer, but much more dangerous arrow of green energies hurtling at his chest.

The simulacrum standing beside him immediately thrust his arm into the path of the arrow,

sacrificing it to shield Zorian from the blow. The arm exploded at the mere touch of the magical

projectile, negating the attack but showering Zorian with a rain of metal shrapnel. Zorian didn’t try to

defend himself against the flying metal pieces, opting to keep casting his counterattack instead. The

shrapnel was stopped by his shield, a faint honeycomb pattern momentarily becoming visible around

him as it absorbed the attack, and then Zorian finished his spell.

Nothing visibly happened, but this was because his projectiles were utterly invisible – a pair of

circular discs of severing force made their way towards the lich, who was currently busy dodging

massive boulders and fireballs that Zach was sending his way.

Beside them, Princess released a loud roar into the air with six of her many heads, the last two being

busy chewing through the throat of a giant eagle she managed to snatch straight out of the air. The

great bird hung limply from her jaws, its riders nowhere to be seen. The fight had been going on for

long enough that an Eldemarian response group had reached them and tried to involve themselves

into the fight. Unfortunately for them, neither group had appreciated their interference. Their eagle

riders had lost at least half of their numbers – one could see the charred husks of their eagles and

mages mixed among the wreckage of the battlefield if one looked closely enough. The remaining

eagles now circled uneasily in the sky above, keeping their distance and simply observing things.

Several sites in the distance were also smoking. These were the places where Eldemarian forces

had tried to set up artillery positions to pick them off from a distance. Quatach-Ichl hadn’t liked that

idea, though, and after he had finished wiping them all out, they did not bother trying a second

attempt at it.

Zach shouted an order at Princess, and she roughly threw the dead eagle aside and disappeared.

Well, teleported to be more exact. She reappeared instantly at Quatach-Ichl’s side, where she

instantly tried biting and trampling him. Even the ancient lich had trouble putting down such a large,

regenerating beast… especially when Zach and Zorian were there keeping him from being able to

focus solely on dealing with her.

Distracted as he was by the hydra and Zach, Quatach-Ichl did not notice the severing discs until it

was too late and ended up losing one of his arms. This, in turn, placed him at an even bigger

disadvantage and forced him to burn through a lot of his mana reserves to fend them off and

stabilize himself. Now that he had no imperial crown on him, his mana reserves were no longer quite

as ridiculous as they once were. He could no longer just outlast them by default. Now Zach proudly

wore the crown to battle, which meant it was Quatach-Ichl who had to worry about a war of attrition.

The battle continued on for another five minutes before eventually slowing down. Eventually, the two

sides found themselves staring at each other over an expanse of barren land, waiting for the other to

make a move. Zach and Zorian could press their advantage, of course, but that would only cause

the lich to flee. There was no point to that, really.

The seconds slowly ticked by with nothing to show for it. The only sounds were occasional

screeching of giant eagles circling overhead and Princess hissing at them and at Quatach-Ichl in

response.

“Hey,” Zach finally said, his voice magically distorted and his face hidden behind a blank white mask.

He pulled the imperial crown off his head and twirled it around his finger playfully. “Are you looking

for this?”

Quatach-Ichl’s response was to fire one of his signature red disintegration beams at him. However,

Zach did not move a finger to dodge or block it. The beam just curved unnaturally around him and

missed.

“We might be willing to give it back,” Zorian pointed out, his voice also distorted.

Quatach-Ichl cocked his head to the side curiously, saying nothing.

“Or we can just continue this for another couple of days, I guess,” Zach added. “I don’t know about

you, but I kind of enjoy these clashes between us. A bit of excitement to spice up the day, you

know?”

“So. You want to talk, huh?” Quatach-Ichl observed. He looked up at the Eldemar eagle riders

circling above. “This probably isn’t the best place to do it, though.”

“Pick a time and place, then,” Zach said. “Just don’t keep us waiting for too long. We’re on a bit of a

time limit here. You drag your feet too much and we’ll just keep the crown and be done with it.”

Quatach-Ichl didn’t bother answering him. He simply picked up a rock from the ground and

squeezed it in his skeletal hand. Bright orange lines burned themselves into the surface of the rock

before fading away. The lich then threw the rock at their feet and then teleported away.

Zorian picked the rock up. It was still warm, and there was a time and address carved into it.

Plus a single sentence at the end.

‘Don’t be late.’

- break -

Zorian had no intention of telling Quatach-Ichl about the time loop or trying to talk him into helping

them get out. That would obviously just blow up in their faces. The ancient lich had no motivation to

sabotage the plans of his original self by helping them escape into the real world. The last time he’d

realized he was just a copy in a duplicate world, he’d had no compunctions whatsoever about

sacrificing himself to advance the cause of his original by crippling them. A person like that wouldn’t

help them just to save his own hide, and they had nothing to really offer him.

But they did not have to tell him about the time loop. They did not have to ask him to help them to

escape. What they needed at the moment was more time, and to get that they needed their Black

Room project to succeed.

And with Quatach-Ichl’s help, it could very well succeed spectacularly.

At the moment, they were in a private room in one of Cyoria’s many restaurants, discussing this idea

with the Ibasan leader. Quatach-Ichl was in his human disguise, and Zach and Zorian had agreed to

come unmasked as a show of trust.

“So let me get this straight,” Quatach-Ichl said, playing around with his glass. “You want me to help

you improve Eldemar’s time dilation room to a completely ridiculous rate of dilation–”

“Specifically, we need another five months,” Zach said, cutting into his speech.

“–and in exchange you are going to give me my own crown back?” finished Quatach-Ichl, pretending

he didn’t hear him. “Doesn’t that strike you as incredibly brazen and a foolish thing to ask for? I

mean, I will get that crown back. It’s just a matter of time.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Zach. “Zorian, do your thing.”

Zorian nodded and started casting the gate spell. Quatach-Ichl was instantly on guard, but he only

tensed imperceptibly and did not attack them or voice any protest. He watched curiously as Zorian

finished casting the spell and opened a miniature dimensional gate just above his palm.

If one looked closely, they could see a featureless patch of water by looking through the gate.

“Well… done?” Quatach-Ichl said dubiously. “You can cast the gate spell. Not something many

people can brag about but–”

“Scan it,” Zach told him. “See where it leads.”

Frowning, Quatach-Ichl did just that, casting a bunch of divinations to determine the location of the

other side of the portal. After a full two minutes of tinkering, he leaned back in his chair and gave

Zach a strange look.

“It’s just a random patch of the ocean, as far as I can see. Very far away from any land,” he said.

“Precisely,” Zach said, grinning from ear to ear. “Now… what do you think would happen if we just

chucked this crown through that portal and closed it?”

Quatach-Ichl’s eyes widened in shock and realization. The truth was that the deep sea was utterly

unreachable from the perspective of humanity. Even the most powerful of mages would have no

hopes of finding something that had been thrown away into the middle of the ocean. Even a lich like

Quatach-Ichl, who had no need to breathe and potentially lived forever, would balk at the idea of

searching through the ocean floor for a needle in a haystack.

If Zach and Zorian really did pick a random spot in the ocean, far away from any land, and threw the

crown there… it would be scarcely different from destroying it utterly.

“You wouldn’t,” Quatach-Ichl said severely. “The value of that crown–”

“If we can’t get this Black Room to work, we’re dead,” Zach said, leaning forward towards the lich.

“There, I said it. We’re desperate and our lives literally depend on this working. So if we fail, this

crown is utterly useless to us. Why keep it around, then? Anyone we give it to would just become a

target for you. Better to throw it into the sea so you can’t have it.”

“You…” said Quatach-Ichl, speechless for a moment. He shook his head. “I see. So I either get the

crown back from you now or I lose it forever. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That is what we’re saying,” Zach said, leaning back into his chair with a bright smile.

“Besides, don’t pretend you aren’t interested in the Black Rooms and that helping us with this is just

a chore for you,” Zorian pointed out. “We know for a fact that you have been interested in the time

magic research facility beneath Cyoria for quite some time. Black Room projects require a great deal

of funding and manpower to be developed, and Ulquaan Ibasa is probably not very abundant in

either. This is a bit unfortunate since, as a place full of undead, you are the nation most able to

exploit this sort of thing to its full potential. No need to worry about lifespan limits if you don’t age.

And you definitely need every advantage you can get, if you are to really compete with Eldemar and

other Altazian powers. Am I right?”

“Hm. Maybe,” said Quatach-Ichl after a short pause. “You’re saying I would get all the information

regarding the Eldemarian Black Room project?”

“How else can we expect you to help us improve it?” Zorian asked. “However, you’re thinking too

small. It’s not just the Eldemarian project that you would have access to. It’s also the Sulamnon

project, and the Falkrinean projects, and everyone’s project. Every Black Room project on the

continent.”

He took out a bright red folder out of his bag and handed it to Quatach-Ichl. It did not hold any

comprehensive notes, of course, but it held enough to make it clear what kind of information Zach

and Zorian had at their disposal.

Quatach-Ichl leafed through the folder, slowly at first but picking up as he saw more and more. His

eyebrows also got higher and higher as he got closer to the end.

“This… how did you even get this?” he asked them. He sounded honestly impressed.

“We raided every Black Room facility on the continent and stole their notes and research data,”

Zorian said.

“Hmm,” Quatach-Ichl hummed lightly. “I guess this really is very important to you…”

They spent the next fifteen minutes discussing the details of the proposed agreement. Though

Quatach-Ichl never really agreed to anything and did his best to look uninterested, Zorian could tell

they were gradually winning him over.

“So, there is one thing I’m really concerned about here,” the ancient lich finally said. “If I agree to this

and help you as we agreed… what motive do you have to honor your part of the deal in the end?

Yes, I will admit a certain amount of interest in the information you have about Black Rooms, but the

crown you stole from me is the real issue. What guarantee do I have that you’ll actually hand it over

to me at the end?”

“If you agree to help us, we will hand you the crown right now,” Zorian said.

Quatach-Ichl raised his eyebrow at them. He had been doing that a lot in this conversation.

“Yes, really,” Zorian confirmed.

Zach had already used the Key to unbar the gate. Now the only value of the imperial items was in

their basic abilities, and while the crown was extremely useful… they needed Quatach-Ichl’s help far

more at the moment.

They could always steal the crown the original was wearing when they got to the real world.

“What makes you think I won’t just take the crown and walk away laughing?” Quatach-Ichl asked

curiously.

“You could do that, yes,” Zach said. “We don’t think you will, though. You are an honorable kind of

undead.”

“Huh. I don’t know whether to feel pleased my reputation is so good or look down on you for being

so foolish,” the lich said.

“Does that mean you agree to the deal?” Zach asked him.

“Let me ask you a question,” the Ibasan leader said. “What actually made you think you could work

with me on this? I mean, yes, you clearly looked into me for quite some time before making your

move. You even did that without me becoming aware that someone was plotting against me, and

some part of me cannot help but be impressed by that. However, it still seems very strange you feel

confident enough to propose this deal. Seems very risky.”

“We live a very risky life,” Zach said, grinning.

“Yet you’re still alive,” the lich noted with a more subdued smile of his own. “Clearly it is not just a

matter of overconfidence, then.”

“If we answer this question for you, will you answer one of ours?” Zorian asked him.

“Sure,” Quatach-Ichl said, waving his hand in front of him carelessly. “Ask away.”

“Why are you working with the Cult of the World Dragon to release the primordial trapped in Cyoria?”

Zorian asked. “I refuse to believe someone like you would be ignorant of what exactly you are

tangling with. This is not some fancy summon that will go away in a few hours, nor is it just a

powerful monster. This is a creature that even the gods had trouble killing. Why would you set that

thing loose on the world? I can see a regular rogue mage not caring about the consequences much,

but surely you do. You have a homeland you care deeply for, and you probably intend to be alive for

a very long time from now.”

“Forever,” Quatach-Ichl said. “I intend to live forever.”

“Then why?” Zorian asked. “Why release a godlike entity that could very well destroy everything in a

few centuries?”

The lich looked at him for a few seconds, looking amused.

“Ha ha!” the lich laughed. “So. You do know about the whole invasion business I’m a part of.”

“Yes,” Zach confirmed. “We do.”

“As I expected,” Quatach-Ichl responded. “I guess that kind of answers my question, doesn’t it? If

you know about the invasion plot, you already know I’m willing to enter into highly risky and insane

deals if the benefits are big enough. But anyway, about your question… the thing is, I don’t think the

primordial is going to be allowed to run free that long. Never mind centuries, I don’t think it is going to

last two weeks!”

“Why?” Zach asked, frowning.

“Because I have faith in the angels,” the lich said.

What?

“Sounds strange to have someone like me say that, doesn’t it?” Quatach-Ichl said, smiling

knowingly. “It’s true, though. The gods may be gone, but the angels are still around and I have no

doubt they would do everything in their power to either reseal or kill the primordial. Their restrictions

limit their ability to meddle in the physical world, so it’s easy to underestimate them, but they have

some truly awe-inspiring beings and weapons on their side. I should know; I saw them personally

fighting a few times. One primordial should not be impossible for them to handle.”

“So you want to free the primordial, knowing the angels would take care of it long before it becomes

your problem…” Zorian said.

“Yes,” the lich confirmed. “Frankly, my main worry is not that the angels will not be able to handle

it… my main worry is that they will take care of it too quickly and that the damage from its release

and subsequent rampage will be too limited in scope. I ordered all the temples razed to the ground

at the very beginning of the invasion, but I fear it may not be enough. The angels can be surprisingly

subtle and underhanded when they want to be. For all I know, they may be working against me even

now.”

He had no idea.

“We are actually really fortunate,” Quatach-Ichl continued, sounding very smug. “It is likely that the

ability of the angels to interfere with our plans is even more limited due to the recent…

hmm, complications in the spiritual spheres.”

“You mean the fact all communications with the spiritual world have been severed lately?” Zorian

asked.

“Hmm. Very well informed, indeed,” Quatach-Ichl mumbled quietly. “Yes, that. It’s rather unplanned,

but not unwelcome. You could say the very heavens are helping me, ha ha!”

A small silence descended on the scene.

“So,” Zach said. “Do we have a deal or not?”

“I suppose we do,” the lich said. “I must be going senile in my old age, but I’ll give you a chance.”

“Oh yeah, one more thing,” Zorian said. “We kind of also approached the Esoteric Order of the

Celestial Dragon about this and some other things. Unfortunately, they have been more

unreasonable about this than you have so we have kind of ended up kidnapping them.”

He threw a small painting on the table. It was very realistic, depicting a group of bound and gagged

men. There was no proof that the picture was real, of course, but Quatach-Ichl frowned when he saw

it and stayed silent.

“Since we’re working together now, we were hoping you could help us convince them to cooperate,”

Zorian said. “At the very least, we need their help to make this deal between us actually work.

Otherwise, I fear we’ll be forced to subject them to our… intense cooperation techniques.”

“Hmph. Of course the incompetent idiots got captured,” Quatach-Ichl muttered.

He threw the picture onto the table before giving them a more cautious, speculative look. He then

thrust his hand towards them, palm pointing upwards.

“The crown,” he demanded, shaking his hand.

With a sigh, Zach reached towards one of his pockets and pulled out the imperial crown. He gave it

a look of sad longing before slowly and carefully placing it in Quatach-Ichl’s palm.

The lich immediately placed the crown on the top of his head, a web of geometric lines immediately

lighting up all over his skin and flashing dangerously. For a moment his disguise dropped and his

black skeletal form became plainly visible, but then he was back to ‘normal’ and his human guise

was intact.

The crown was no longer visible, hidden under whatever magic Quatach-Ichl used to keep himself

looking like a living being.

“Right,” he said. “Take me to those clowns and I’ll talk to them. They’ll cooperate.”

- break -

Things developed very quickly after that.

Zorian was honestly surprised how well things turned out. He was afraid the kidnapped mages would

refuse to work or drag their feet whenever possible. He was afraid Quatach-Ichl would just take the

crown and just leave them to their devices while laughing at their stupidity. He was afraid the cult

leaders would sabotage everything out of spite, resentful that they had been basically arm-twisted

into agreeing with their plans.

None of these things happened. The kidnapped researchers mostly chose to work with them instead

of being defiant. A surprising number of them were even enthusiastic about the project, once they

realized what they had been recruited to work on. It probably helped that Zach and Zorian promised

them they could take all the documentation related to the project back home with them when they

were finished. Though somewhat skeptical about that, the sheer scale of the project seemed to put

people at ease. There was no way they would kill so many people just to shut everyone up, right?

Quatach-Ichl was a skeleton of his word. Just like he had never tried to cheat them after agreeing to

teach them his magical skills, he did not attempt to get out of helping with the project once he

committed to it. Which was great, because his help was insanely helpful and they would never have

gotten as far as they did without him. He was more than just a replacement for Silverlake – he was

vastly better than her and Zorian was honestly kind of sorry they couldn’t recruit him to work on the

time loop exit project as well. With his help, their odds would have improved immensely.

Alas, the idea of informing him about the time loop was still as foolish as it always had been.

“Even if Red Robe had left the time loop thanks to a deal with Panaxeth, he still had to find a way to

make his temporary marker last past the six month time limit,” Zorian told Zach when they were

discussing the topic at one point.

“You think it wasn’t Panaxeth who helped him modify that?” Zach asked.

“Maybe it did, but I doubt the primordial actually did any modification itself. It may have given Red

Robe clues and instructions, but he still needed to find someone to do that for him.”

“And you think that someone was Quatach-Ichl,” Zach guessed.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “Yet, if Quatach-Ichl helped Red Robe acquire a permanent marker, why

would he not acquire one himself?”

“Perhaps he couldn’t,” offered Zach. “I mean, the fact that temporary markers do not work on people

for six restarts after the previous temporary marker runs out clearly indicates it’s not the marker that

does the counting. It’s the Sovereign Gate and the Guardian of the Threshold.”

“So?” Zorian asked.

“So that means modifying a temporary marker has to be done before the Sovereign Gate processes

it in some way. In all likelihood, that means any change to them must be made before the restart in

which they gained the marker ends. We know from your example that the Guardian can only do

certain things at the end of the restart, and this is probably one of them. This would also explain why

we never managed to figure out a way to modify them that worked. The moment that first restart

ended the chance was lost, and we never even realized it.”

“Ah,” Zorian said. That did make a lot of sense… “So you think Quatach-Ichl was already a

temporary looper for a while before Red Robe entered?”

“I don’t know. I’m just throwing the idea out there, I guess,” Zach said with a shrug. “What do you

think happened?”

“I think maybe Quatach-Ichl didn’t even want to leave the time loop, even if he found out about it,”

Zorian said. “I mean, definitely not through a method Red Robe and Silverlake used. Entering into a

death pact with a primordial? Not a chance. And physically leaving on your own is very hard. I don’t

think even Quatach-Ichl could have pulled it off, considering the amount of effort we had to put into

it. Perhaps he simply made a deal with Red Robe, similar to what I have with Xvim, Kael and the

others. Once he gets out, he gives Quatach-Ichl a mountain of notes and other information, and in

exchange he helps modify Red Robe’s marker.”

“He could have still demanded a temporary marker of his own and modified that,” Zach pointed out.

“Just in case, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Zorian said after a while. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s as you say, and he just couldn’t. I

could see Panaxeth giving Red Robe a very specific solution tailored for him alone. It probably

doesn’t want anyone getting out without making a deal with him.”

Their interaction with the Cult of the World Dragon was very adversarial at first. For one thing, they

had kidnapped them and blackmailed them into working with them, so it was inevitable they were not

too enthusiastic about cooperating. It also didn’t help that Zorian evacuated all the shifters out of the

city and informed the cult leadership that no child sacrifice would be allowed in their attempt to free

Panaxeth from his prison. That led to a lot of shouting and even a brief exchange of combat spells.

However, the cult leaders would ultimately see the light when Zach and Zorian showed them the

Sovereign Gate. They did not explain to the cultists what the object exactly did, but they did tell them

it was a divine artifact that contained some of the essence of Panaxeth itself… and could thus be

used as a key to open Panaxeth’s prison. A much better key than the shifter blood essence they

originally planned to use for the purpose, too.

Though their description was deceptive, the basic facts were entirely true – within the reality of the

time loop, the Sovereign Gate could very much be used as a key to open Panaxeth’s prison. In fact,

using the Sovereign Gate was the key part of their plan to exit the time loop. This had been true

while they had Silverlake’s cooperation and it was true now.

Zorian had been a little worried that the cultists would figure out too much if given access to the

Sovereign Gate, but thankfully that never happened. They were overjoyed with it, but only because it

was a better, fancier key to releasing Panaxeth out of its prison. They never realized what was truly

going on inside of it.

Considering it was a divine artifact, and that those were notoriously hard to figure out, Zorian

probably shouldn’t have been surprised at that.

In any case, their plans went off flawlessly. Better than they could have hoped, even. They had dug

up a massive underground facility, reshaped the entire local geomantic web to fuel its creation, and

then surrounded the imperial orb with layers upon layers of complicated wards and barriers made

out of extremely expensive materials. The cost of the whole project was enough to bankrupt a small

country and would give even a major nation like Eldemar and Falkrinea pause if they had to pay for

it. By the end of it, even Quatach-Ichl seemed to be getting a little uneasy at the amount of

resources and effort being put into this thing.

It didn’t matter though, because he stayed true to his word and the project was finished on time. Six

days before the end of the restart, the improved Black Room was done. A large throng of people –

time loopers, cult leaders and the more enthusiastic of the kidnapped researchers – piled on into the

imperial orb and then the time dilation was activated.

They would spend the next five months inside the imperial orb. Outside, a single day would pass.

Quatach-Ichl did not join them in the orb, despite helping them make it. This was smart of him,

because Zach and Zorian would have killed him the moment the orb was isolated from the outside

world and stolen his crown again. Zorian wasn’t sure whether Quatach-Ichl could have escaped

back to his phylactery if he was killed inside the palace orb, but even if he could they wouldn’t care.

The important thing was that he could not escape when overpowered inside the orb, and that having

him inside for the full five months was too much of a risk. The cult leaders were… manageable.

Someone like Quatach-Ichl wasn’t.

In any case, the next five months would consist of improving everyone’s skills so they could help

with the final exit plan, manufacturing the necessary ward stones and blueprints to prepare the

terrain, and so on. It would be a bit of a challenge to hide the true meaning of all the preparations

from the cult leaders and the like, but Zorian was not opposed to simply killing them if they ended up

revealing too much to them, so whatever.

Zorian had another thing he wanted to do, though. Something he wanted to keep hidden from most

people… including Zach.

Thus, he gathered most of the aranea loopers, plus Xvim and Daimen, and brought them to one of

the isolated corners of the orb dimension for a talk.

“What a strange group you have gathered,” Xvim remarked. “It seems you are still not satisfied with

your mind magic skills, if I am reading the situation correctly.”

“Seriously?” Daimen complained. “Aren’t you good enough at that, already?”

“You can never get good enough at mind magic,” one of the aranea responded.

“Indeed,” Zorian said. “It’s my best skill, and it’s good to keep working on those. However, I didn’t

bring you here to work on my general mind magic skills. What I want… is to figure out a way to get

past the Mind Blank spell and target a person with mind magic anyway.”

A look of realization entered everyone’s eyes. Even the aranea – their body language was a little

hard to read but Zorian had gotten a feeling for it by now.

Then they all got to work.

- break -

The escape attempt had to happen at the end of the month, on the day of the Summer Festival. The

reasoning for this was identical to the one the Ibasans and the cultists used to launch their invasion

at that particular moment in time – this was the peak of the planetary alignment, when

dimensionalism magic was at its strongest.

When the group left the imperial orb, only five days remained until the deadline. This was not much,

but it was enough to make the necessary preparations. The time magic research facility was

completely repurposed into a part of the exit ritual. Large sections of the Hole were covered in

carved spell formula and embedded with strange metallic ward stones. The cultists they had spent

five months training in dimensionalism and divinations had analyzed Panaxeth’s prison and shared

their results with the group. They seemed honestly grateful to Zach and Zorian for the ‘help’ they had

given them, which made Zorian feel just a little bit guilty about intending to utterly betray them in the

end. Not enough for him to do anything differently, but still.

Sadly, the final plan they had agreed upon had some unfortunate details. The original plan was to

use Panaxeth’s prison as a bridge, opening a dimensional gate that would connect a spot in the time

loop with the same spot in the real world. That plan was now largely unworkable. Silverlake had

been the only one who knew how to interact with the primordial’s prison with sufficient finesse to

make that possible. Despite their best efforts in trying to develop that skill in some of their people,

they had failed to duplicate her feats. It did not help that they obviously could not experiment on the

primordial prison itself while inside the imperial orb – they could only work on their general

dimensionalism skills and try to guess what was necessary to interact with it properly.

Still, while the original plan was no longer possible, they did have an alternative. It was just that this

plan required them to crack open Panaxeth’s prison and then sacrifice the imperial orb to serve as a

bridge they needed to connect the two realities.

There were two problems with this. The first was that it required them to destabilize the primordial’s

prison and make a crack in it – something that usually triggered a premature end to the restart and

would allow Panaxeth to extend its influence outside the prison while they attempted to form the

bridge. This would be solved by enclosing the area with multiple layers of dimensional membranes,

so that even after breaching its prison, Panaxeth would not be truly ‘free’. They weren’t totally sure it

would work, but it was the best idea they had and the theory was sound. Even if it worked, though, it

would only stop the restart from ending immediately – it would do nothing to stop Panaxeth from

rampaging about.

The other was that using the imperial orb that way meant they couldn’t take it with them to the real

world. It would have to stay behind to form a path for them, which would sharply limit the amount of

things they could bring with them from the time loop as well as result in the total loss of all of the

research notes and blueprints Zorian had stored in its memory bank.

That was… painful, to say the least. There was no other choice, however. The imperial orb was the

only pocket dimension reinforced with divine power that they knew of. It was the only thing they

knew of that could withstand the dimensional stresses involved in the procedure. Everything else

would break in seconds.

Deciding what to bring with them and what to leave behind was stressful and led to a lot of

arguments, but somehow they managed to cut their possessions down to a manageable level.

Days passed in a flash, until there was no more time. The Summer Festival was upon them, and the

invasion was about to begin. Zach and Zorian had meant to kill all the cult leaders the day before, to

make sure they wouldn’t interfere with their work, but their unlikely allies surprised them by

graciously agreeing to step aside of their own free will. The official reason was that they had ‘figured

out’ that their group planned to release the primordial too, and that thus there was no need for them

to get involved. Zorian did not believe that for a second, of course. The leadership of the cult wanted

to control the primordial, not just release it. Moreover, Quatach-Ichl was never very far from the cult

leaders these days, making direct moves against them impossible.

Reluctantly, they decided to let the matter drop. Hopefully the lich and the cultists would be too busy

fighting the city to try and sabotage their operation. They had done their best to covertly prepare the

city and its defenders for the upcoming invasion so the attackers should have their hands full in that

regard. They simply made the last round of preparations and then settled down to wait.

Everything was ready.

Zorian turned to Zach.

“If this fails, I’m dead,” he told him.

Zach shifted uncomfortably.

“The Guardian may have been lying for some reason,” he said. “Perhaps you will wake up at the

start of the next restart and–”

“Maybe,” said Zorian, cutting him off. He really doubted it, though. “However, it’s best to plan for

things not being so convenient. Anyway, if everything fails and we all die, it’s all up to you. You’re

our last and only hope.”

“I… I guess,” Zach sighed, looking really pained at the idea of him getting out of this thing alone.

“Look, I know this probably sounds hollow… but if anything happens to you, I promise I will take care

of your original self, alright?”

“That actually does make me feel somewhat better,” Zorian said. “Come on. It’s starting.”

The ritual was taking place inside the Hole, on a floating platform. There was a raised dais in the

center, on which the Sovereign Gate stood. It struck Zorian that this was a very similar setup to the

one the cult had used for their ritual. They really had ended up supplanting their role in a way, hadn’t

they?

Of course, the real setup their group was using was much more extensive than what the cultists had

used in the past. Though the main ritual grounds consisted of this one floating platform, the

supporting mechanisms actually extended throughout the entire local underworld. Additionally, the

entire space around them was enclosed in several layers of dimensional membranes that isolated

the place from the outside world as much as possible. There would be no plucky trio of mages

simply flying up to them in a sphere of white force to disrupt the whole thing from within, like Zach

and Zorian had done to the cultists in one of the previous restarts.

The entire group arranged itself into a series of three concentric circles. Zach, Zorian, Daimen and

Xvim were at the very center, surrounding the Sovereign Gate. They were the people most skilled in

dimensionalism, and thus the most crucial for the effort. Around them were dozens of people who

had enough skills to contribute, but not enough to take on the heavy burden that the main four were

responsible for. Finally, there was the rest of the group who couldn’t really help the procedure work,

and could only stay back and pray for everyone’s success. They were here only because once the

area had been enclosed in dimensional membranes, no one could get in without disrupting

everything and causing the ritual to fail. Thus, if they wanted to get them outside, they had to be

present inside while the ritual took place.

After some shouting and pushing, everyone was in their assigned position and (hopefully) knew what

to do. They started casting.

For the first five minutes, nothing much happened. The air above the platform warped and twisted

like hot summer air, but nothing more than that occurred. The group had to be exceptionally careful

about their spell work and timing, and that meant work was bound to be slow. Still, everything was

proceeding well so f–

The walls of the Hole shook, sending dust and pebbles everywhere and causing the inscribed spell

formula in the walls to flare and flicker with an ominous blue light. A deep rumbling sound emanated

from somewhere in the distance, like a growl of a titanic beast.

Crap. What the hell was going on outside? What were Quatach-Ichl and the cultists doing?

“Stay focused!” Xvim warned. “We are at a critical–”

Another tremor, this one even stronger, shook the entire place and everything suddenly went to hell.

The shimmering, controlled breach they were working towards quickly spun out of control, and a

pitch black, irregular crack suddenly manifested itself in the air around them.

“Shit!” Zach swore. “Suppress it! Suppress it!”

But it was too late. A swarm of dark brown tentacles, ropelike and covered in thorns, rushed out of

the crack and sent everyone scattering out of their positions.

The crack widened, revealing a giant, three-lobed, inhuman eye lurking behind the dimensional

barrier, and more tentacles rushed out to confront them. These were thicker, and had rather human-

like hands attached at the end.

Though things had gone badly, all was not lost. They had made the ritual with certain tolerances,

and this was still a manageable outcome. Quickly, many of the people standing around in the third

circle of the ritual rushed forwards and started fighting the tentacles. People like Kyron and Taiven

had no skills with which to help the ritual itself, but they had plenty of combat power and no other

duties to distract them. They fearlessly charged into the invading primordial mass, recklessly burning

through their mana to keep it away from Zorian and the others.

As for Zach and Zorian, they were busy suppressing the breach and could offer very little help.

Should their attention lapse for even a second, Panaxeth would overwhelm them before they could

blink. They frantically dodged the flailing tentacles, shaping and stabilizing the breach into something

manageable.

Dimly, Zorian was aware that one of the ‘hands’ that got severed in half by Taiven suddenly grew

legs and claws and flung itself at her. Taiven ended up tackled at the ground, unable to cast much of

anything. Kyron managed to blast the thing off of her, but she had to be dragged off to the side,

effectively out of the fight.

She was also bleeding heavily, leaving a thick trail of blood as she was dragged to the edge of the

platform. Zorian had no idea if she was going to live, and couldn’t really afford to check at the

moment.

Not far from there, one of the aranea tried to block one of the thin, thorny tentacles with a force

shield but found her defenses to be lacking. The tentacle punched through her shield and swiftly

wrapped itself around her torso several times. That’s when they found out that the thorns weren’t just

very sharp, but were also thin and bladed like a razor. The high-pitched scream of the aranea cut off

quickly as the thorns effortlessly sliced through her exoskeleton and turned her into a mutilated

corpse.

The tentacle then picked up the corpse and started waving it around like a bloody flail, sending blood

and viscera everywhere. Some of the mages panicked or flinched when the aranean blood

splattered all over them, even if no actual damage was done, and their efforts to keep the breach in

check started to fail.

“Damn it,” swore Zorian, reaching into his jacket pocket and removing a handful of steel spheres

densely covered in spell formula. He had been hoping to save these for later. He needed them later.

But if he didn’t use this now, they were done for.

He flung the spheres at the rift above and they spontaneously aligned themselves around it into a

quickly rotating ring before starting to glow. The primordial’s tentacles reacted quickly, switching

directions and trying to tear the sphere formation apart, but thankfully the rest of the group

immediately realized they could not let that happen. A swarm of multi-colored rays, bullets, and more

exotic projectiles intercepted the tentacles, halting their charge for a moment.

A moment was enough. The spheres erupted into blinding white light, blinding everyone for a

moment, and then the rift abruptly shrunk. Some of the tentacles, cut off from the source of their

mass by the shrinkage, fell from the sky, crashing onto the platform with a loud thud.

Their relief was short-lived, however, since the tentacles soon started twitching and bubbling like

boiling water, before starting to merge into an ovoid, chrysalis-like mass.

Alanic was the first to act, sending streams of white-hot flames at the forming cocoon, and then

everyone joined in. However, the structure seemed to have developed some kind of resistance to

the spells they had used on the tentacles thus far, because it was stubbornly resisting attempts to

eradicate it.

Deep within it, some horrible shape rapidly began to form.

And the Sovereign Gate spontaneously started glowing white, a silhouette of the familiar form of the

Guardian of the Threshold forming right above it.

“Shit…” Zorian couldn’t help but mumble.

“Use the orb,” Xvim said.

“But–” Daimen protested.

“We have no choice,” Xvim interrupted. “We have no time. It has to be now.”

After a moment of indecision, Daimen reached to his side and threw the imperial orb at the crack.

Zach, Daimen, Zorian and Xvim quickly started casting layers upon layers of spells on it, trying to

integrate it into Panaxeth’s prison like they had intended.

It wasn’t going well enough, so Zorian reached for more of the items he prepared for this – a

collection of metal tablets, several staves made out of alchemically-treated wood, and a box of

several hundred marbles, each of which contained a three-dimensional spell formula made out of

metal wire. He sacrificed it all in succession and even burned some of his life force to make his

spells hit harder. He was fairly sure he noticed Zach, Xvim and Daimen doing the same, burning

their life to make sure the fusion worked.

They succeeded. The imperial orb pulsed three times with translucent waves of rainbow light before

pulling the pitch black rift into itself. The crack in the sky disappeared, but the orb seemed to pull in

the space around it still. The air warped and rippled, forming a pitch black sphere above the orb, its

surface rippling like water. Around it, a smoky grey torus burst into existence, crackling with

multicolored energies. Then another, and then another, until three grey tori revolved around the pitch

black sphere that had suddenly grown perfectly still and featureless.

The exit. It was ready!

Unfortunately, that’s when the glowing form of the Guardian of the Threshold finished materializing.

It did not speak a word, simply raising its hand at the group and releasing a thick, blinding beam of

white energy at them.

The beam did not even cross half of the distance towards them before it suddenly split into more

than a hundred thinner, but equally bright beams.

Zach and Zorian’s simulacrums, previously held in reserve, sprang into action. So did the combat

golems Zorian made for the occasion. But the beams were fast and each one swerved and pivoted

in the air like a living thing, tracking its chosen target. Hastily erected defenses did nothing to stop

them, and Zorian was pained to see Ilsa, Nora, and two of the aranea killed on the spot when the

beams hit them.

The exit was right there, open and ready, yet four people had died so close to their salvation.

Some people fired a counter-attack at the spectral form of the Guardian, but the entity did not

attempt to dodge or shield itself from the attacks in any way. Every attack that reached it simply sank

into its glowing form and disappeared. There was no indication that the Guardian had suffered any

damage from the attacks, or even that it had noticed them.

Damn it, they needed to start the evacuation now! Zorian started directing his simulacrums to start

the preparations, but that’s when the primordial chrysalis from before suddenly exploded, a large,

vaguely humanoid beast bursting out of it. It had four arms. A three-eyed, skeletal head stood

attached to its shoulders through a long, flexible neck. Its tail was extremely long and thin, and

ended with a hand-like appendage. Glossy, chitinous carapace covered it, studded with thin, razor-

like spikes.

It roared horribly, its sound incredibly loud and grating… and then it dropped on all six of its main

limbs and charged straight at the center of the platform, where Zorian and the others were located.

Anyone who tried to get in its way was flung aside like a rag doll and every spell that hit it was

resisted with little to show for it.

The glowing form of the Guardian raised its hand again, another beam sparkling on its fingers.

And then, to add a final insult to it all, the entire area rocked and shook as a series of loud booms

erupted from somewhere above.

Zorian’s heart sank. There was no mistaking it. Someone was attacking their ritual grounds from the

outside.

Probably Quatach-Ichl and the cultists.

Damn it! How did they–

No. No, that was a silly thing to ask. He had to focus on the now. He had to–

The Guardian fired another white beam of death. It once again flowered into hundreds of smaller

beams, and this time they were not capable of minimizing the effects. Zorian joined his simulacrums

in blocking as many as he could, but it was not enough. He watched, horrified, as Kael tried to shield

his little daughter from one of the beams with his body. The beam drilled straight through them,

killing them both on the spot.

Kyron managed to block the beam, but that made him too distracted to deal with the primordial beast

running up to him from behind. Its massive, clawed hand swiped across him, shattering through his

hastily erected shield and cleaving him in half before continuing its relentless advance.

Another series of explosions sounded from just outside the ritual grounds and the spell formula that

stabilized the exit to the time loop flickered dangerously.

A small, almost imperceptible crack appeared on the imperial orb floating just beneath the exit. It

could no longer handle the strain of maintaining the bridge to the real world.

Somewhere on the edge of the platform, Zorian could feel Taiven’s soul suddenly wink out. She

probably bled to death while everyone was too busy fighting for their life to tend to her wounds.

Suddenly, it dawned to Zorian that they were all going to die here. They were so close, they had

practically won, and yet–

“Truthfully, I think I’d always known it would end this way,” Daimen suddenly said with a small sigh.

He took a knife out of his pocket and ruthlessly slashed at his wrists.

“Daimen! What are you doing!?” Zorian screeched at him.

“You have to live,” Daimen told him, his hands trembling as he went through a complicated series of

gestures with them, his wrists heavily dripping blood. “It’s fine if I die, but you have to live. Don’t let it

all be in vain. It can’t!”

Suddenly, he thrust his bloody hands towards the collapsing exit in the air, pouring every shred of

his life force into the stabilization wards. The cracks on the imperial orb stopped spreading, the black

surface of the exit calmed down into its smooth, peaceful state, and the spell formula lining the walls

stopped fluctuating for the moment.

Xvim watched the scene for a moment before focusing on Zorian.

“Go,” he said. “Zach and I will keep the exit stable while you pass through.”

“Zach doesn’t need this, but you–” Zorian protested.

“Go!” Xvim shouted at him. “Zach cannot keep this stable by himself. Go now!”

He… could do that, yes. He could go through by himself, abandoning everyone to their fate. But

that…

He glanced at the others, desperately fighting to keep the primordial beast away from them and

keeping the Guardian of the Threshold busy with other targets. They knew the exit was there. They

could have just dropped everything and made a mad dash at the exit in hopes that some of them

would make it. Wouldn’t that be the smartest choice, individually?

Yet none of them had made that choice.

Steeling his heart, Zorian stopped focusing on the maintenance of the exit, handing over his part of

the burden to Xvim and Zach, who visibly struggled under the increased strain. He then crouched

and jumped, casting a quick flight spell and rushing straight at the exit.

The primordial beast screeched in anger, increasing its pace. The Guardian suddenly teleported in

front of Zorian, blocking his path and forcing him to evade and block another series of white beams

that chased after him, pivoting in the air and curving their trajectories to keep him in their sights.

Some of the other loopers helped him out, ignoring their own safety to block some of the beams with

their own spells. The ceiling shook again, this time more severely than before, but Daimen’s final

sacrifice had allowed things to keep working for now.

He was only inches from the exit when the primordial beast suddenly opened its massive bestial

mouth and fired some kind of serrated bony spike straight at his chest.

He was practically a spent force by this point, and could do nothing to stop the spike from slamming

straight into his back and passing straight through his chest.

An explosion of blood and viscera erupted out of him, his whole chest a ruined mess. Perhaps it was

just him losing all sensation as death took him, but it felt to him that everything suddenly went quiet

for a moment as his flight spell failed and his body began to fall to the ground, trailing blood behind

it.

His wound was too serious. He was dead for sure.

Closing his eyes, he initiated the final contingency, separating his soul from his body. A complicated

soul spell he had always kept running in the background suddenly activated, allowing him to

maintain consciousness in soul form. Without hesitation, he abandoned his dying form and rushed

straight into the exit in front of him.

Before either the primordial beast or the Guardian of the Threshold could stop him, he was already

through, following invisible paths that would lead him to the real world.

As a soul, his ability to perceive the real world was highly limited. He followed invisible lines of space

and time, racing through a tunnel he could dimly perceive in front of him. Most of his ability to

navigate in this place came from the fact he had absorbed the dimensional perception of the

tunneler toad and gained a considerable amount of proficiency with it in the five months he had

spent in the imperial orb.

Yet, that same ability was also threatening to undo everything he had accomplished. He had bound

that ability to his mana reserves and his body, but his body was no more. One of the very pillars that

were supposed to anchor the ability to him was gone, and his mana reserves shuddered and

churned, threatening to destabilize. Should that happen, he would lose all ability to cast spells or

even direct his mana. Everything would still fail in the end. He had to hold on for a little while longer.

He focused tightly on keeping control over his mana reserves, even as he tried to navigate to the exit

in the real world.

Dimly, he felt the tunnel start to collapse behind him. Apparently Xvim and Zach had finally lost their

struggle to keep the passage open. Nobody except Zorian had gone through, as far as he could tell.

He drove himself to travel faster.

Finally he was out! He could feel the space open up around him, the tunnel ending. For a while he

was disoriented, confused about what he had to do. His mind was fuzzy – he had never spent this

much time in soul form, especially not with destabilizing mana reserves. However, he eventually

remembered what he had to do. He had to track down his old body.

Fortunately, that was not so difficult. He had no idea where the exit had deposited him, exactly, but

he and his original body shared a certain bond with each other.

It was hard to cast much as a pure soul, but Zorian could do enough to craft himself a set of ghostly

hands. From that point, everything became easy. A couple of divinations to lock down on the

location of his old self, a couple of quick teleports to enter his room and he was there.

His old self was sleeping, blissfully unaware of the invasion. Soul Zorian did not hesitate. His soul

form plunged straight into his old self’s chest, causing the boy to gasp before all his body locked up

as the two souls started to fight for the ownership of the body.

Maybe it was quick. Maybe it was slow. Zorian had never fought a soul battle or possessed

someone’s body before. What he did know was that his old self never had a chance. From the

moment he attacked, the ultimate outcome was never in question.

He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling of his room.

His room. Yes. Definitely his room.

He rose into a sitting position and looked around. It was night. He thought he would maybe wake up

when Kirielle came to jump on top of him, but then he remembered that the time loop technically

began much earlier than that.

He placed his right palm in front of him. A ghostly orb of white light bobbed up and down just above

it.

The soul of his old self.

He stared at it for a full five minutes, trying to decide what to do with it. He had considered the issue

before, of course, but now that he was actually here…

After a while, he closed his palm around the soul, causing it to fade away and move on to the

afterlife.

To do anything else, seemed… cruel.

Then he jumped out of bed, took a look around his dark, silent room and cracked his knuckles.

It was time to get to work.

Chapter 092

The Scramble

In the months leading up to their disastrous exit from the time loop, Zorian and the other members of

the group had entertained many different outcomes and how each of them would reflect on what

they would have to do immediately after crossing over into the real world. This included the

possibility of having to cross over in soul form, much like Zorian had ended up doing in the end.

Theoretically, this meant that Zorian already knew what to do and how to arrange his priorities.

In practice, things weren’t so simple. While he had succeeded in leaving the time loop and

possessing his old body, the process had a critical flaw.

Their theorizing had assumed that, if Zorian executed everything correctly, he would be at his top

form upon seizing his body. After all, he would possess a body that was flawlessly matched to his

soul, so there shouldn’t be any rejection issues that usually plagued possession attempts. Having

crossed over as a soul meant losing all the physical resources and information storage they had

planned to bring, but at least his magic would be fully intact.

In reality, he didn’t even have that.

The problem was the dimensional ability of the tunneler toad he had anchored to himself in the time

loop. His body may have been perfectly matched to his soul, but it wasn’t the body to which he had

anchored the ability to. Without the life force portion of the anchor, the part located in his mana

reserves couldn’t persist for long, either. He was fortunate he had managed to prevent its collapse

before successfully possessing his old body, or else he’d be dead right now and all the sacrifices the

others had made would have been for nothing. However, once he established full control of his body,

the ability anchor in his mana reserves finally gave out and unraveled completely.

Unraveling a permanent enhancement like that was not a small matter. It caused him no pain, and

he would not be permanently crippled by any means, but his mana reserves would be in utter turmoil

for the next four to five days.

An eternity, considering time was of the essence.

Standing completely still in the darkness of his room, Zorian closed his eyes and sensed his mana

again with a more critical eye. It was bad… but not unmanageable. A regular mage would have been

completely crippled by the chaotic, unruly nature of his current mana reserves, but Zorian had honed

his shaping skills to virtual perfection. Plus, he had experienced something similar before, when

Quatach-Ichl had inflicted grievous soul damage, so he had experience in how to handle these sorts

of things.

Slowly and carefully, he waved his hands in the air in front of him, softly muttering a spell chant.

After some time, a single flawless simulacrum materialized in front of him.

The simulacrum did not speak or wait for Zorian to give him a command. He knew what was asked

from it. He simply walked back to the bed, lied down, closed his eyes, and focused completely on

calming down the raging mana reserves they both shared.

Zorian breathed a sigh of relief as he felt his mana reserves immediately stabilize into a more

manageable form. Good. So long as one of his simulacrums focused all their attention on stabilizing

them, his mana reserves would remain usable. It wasn’t the same as him being in top form, but it

would do for now.

His spellcasting restored to a usable condition, he immediately threw himself into the next task

before him: confirming that Zach had left the time loop and waking him up before Red Robe had a

chance to assassinate him in his sleep. A critical task that would normally require him to drop

everything else and rush to Cyoria, but which might be achievable through faster and cheaper

methods.

Quickly rummaging through his old school supplies for alchemical reagents and deconstructing a

bunch of old items scattered around his room for necessary materials, Zorian constructed a simple

ritual circle on the floor of his room. He then spent almost a minute performing a special long-range

ritual spell… one that tapped into his marker. The same marker that he had shared with Zach.

There was no guarantee that Zach still had the marker on his soul, of course, even if he had

successfully left the time loop. Unlike Zorian, Zach was supposed to leave the time loop the normal

way for a Controller. That is to say, the Guardian of the Threshold would perform the transfer. For all

Zorian knew, this process may have involved erasing the marker, since it was no longer necessary.

However, Zorian had a suspicion that the marker was definitely going to stay embedded in Zach’s

soul. A suspicion that turned out to be correct when the ritual finished, and the information from it

rushed into Zorian’s mind. He could feel the existence of the second marker in the direction of

Cyoria, shining like a star in the darkness.

He breathed a sigh of relief. He had made it out. There was no reason why he wouldn’t have, but so

many things had gone wrong that Zorian did not dare take anything for granted.

He then reached out to Zach over the faint connection provided by the ritual and their identical

markers. His mana reserves dropped like a stone. Bridging the vast distances between Cirin and

Cyoria was hard and costly, even for such a small thing. Without the two identical markers

connecting them, it would have been entirely impossible.

Just before he was about to run out of mana, he succeeded in touching Zach’s soul. It was just a

light brush, but it was enough. A sharp spiritual jolt shook his soul, shocking him awake.

After observing things for a second to make sure he had really succeeded, Zorian broke the

connection and stood up. He couldn’t actually talk to Zach through a spell like that, so there was no

point in burning through his mana to keep the link going. They would talk more once they actually

met.

He waited for a while till his mana reserves recovered and then cast the simulacrum spell three more

times. Like the first simulacrums, these ones did not bother speaking either. There was no point.

Zorian’s connection with his simulacrum was very strong, intertwining them on both mental and

spiritual levels. Though they still had their own individual minds, they were constantly exchanging

thoughts with Zorian and each other, much of it on a purely unconscious level with no need to

expend effort or concentration to make it happen.

Four simulacrums. This was the most he could manage at the moment while still remaining effective.

He would be casting a lot of magic in the near future, so he had to keep his mana regeneration rate

at acceptable levels.

He considered what to do next for a moment, mentally bouncing ideas back and forth between his

simulacrums. While they talked, they silently wandered around the house and rummaged through his

belongings, gathering materials. They didn’t have too much time to spend on making equipment, but

some basic spell aids and disguises were a must.

The chance that Red Robe and Silverlake would target his family immediately after exiting the time

loop was low, in his opinion. Those two had more pressing issues to tackle for now, and Cirin was

far from Cyoria. Red Robe might not even know about Zorian and where he lived, or else he would

have knocked Zorian out of the loop before leaving it. Silverlake obviously did know, but she and

Red Robe presumably did not know each other before now and would struggle to establish trust.

Nonetheless, Zorian knew he couldn’t just leave his family undefended. He had to either move them

to a secure place or leave a simulacrum behind to protect them.

Gathering them up and moving them to some distant area was the safest option. The most

responsible option. However, that would be a lengthy and mana expensive task, and many critical

tasks would have to be postponed until it was done. He couldn’t make that choice. Xvim… Alanic…

all the temporary loopers that had died to keep the exit open instead of trying to save their own

lives… they had made that choice because they trusted him to look after everyone’s interests once

outside. He couldn’t just blow everything off in order to make sure his family was perfectly protected.

Plus, he was ultimately a bit selfish. Evacuating the house would require him to inform his parents

about what was happening or use mental compulsions on them. He didn’t want to do either. He

wanted some semblance of normalcy to remain between them for now. If possible, he wanted to just

wait for them to leave for Koth as they normally did. In just a few days, his parents would be on a

ship at sea and all but unreachable. The problem of their safety was ultimately self-solving.

It was unreasonable, perhaps, but he still held on to a tiny sliver of hope that all this could be solved

without informing the whole world.

He shook his head, forcibly banishing his idle thoughts and fears for the future. It wasn’t the time.

Just as it wasn’t the time to be shaken by the death of people that had been working with him on this

project for more than a year. He’d worry about that later.

A little while later, all the preparations were finished and he was back in his room. He glanced at the

simulacrum to his left and his copy silently nodded at him before wandering off to secure the house.

Cirin was not a magically potent area, and the materials he had at his disposal left a lot to be

desired, but it should be enough. He would have to appropriate a fair portion of the family silverware,

though…

For a second, Zorian stared at the two remaining simulacrums in front of him. Four simulacrums, but

he could really only use two of them. So inefficient. Still, one had to work with what they had, not

what they wished they had. He silently told the two to get ready, and then all three of them started to

cast a powerful teleportation spell. Moments afterward, they were enveloped by a ripple in space

and disappeared.

Lying on the bed, the first simulacrum did not even twitch at their departure. He was wholly

consumed in his task, knowing that if his attention lapsed even slightly over the next couple of hours,

it could spell disaster for everything they were trying to accomplish. Having their mana reserves

suddenly turn chaotic in the middle of a critical moment could kill the original or dispel one of his

fellow simulacrums before they could accomplish their goals. Fortunately, Zorian’s research into

mental enhancements had taught him how to assume some very useful states of mind, or else he

likely wouldn’t have been able to maintain focus over such long periods of time.

The final iteration of the month had not started auspiciously, but Zorian and his simulacrums were

determined to make it work anyway.

- break -

Cyoria was fairly easy to teleport to, since there was a teleport beacon placed in the middle of the

city. Though the real purpose of the construction was to redirect all incoming teleportation into one

specific area, so that they could be more easily monitored and policed, it also acted as a sort of

lighthouse for teleportation magic. This meant that while Red Robe and Silverlake would find it very

inconvenient and mana expensive to travel to a small rural town like Cirin, it was relatively easy and

cheap for Zorian to teleport himself towards Cyoria.

The moment he and his two simulacrums had arrived into the city, they each split off to pursue their

own tasks. For simulacrum number three, that meant checking up on Veyers. After all, there was a

good chance that Red Robe was actually Veyers, in which case he would probably try to get his old

self out of the line of fire as soon as possible. Probably. Whatever the case, visiting Jornak’s place to

see what was happening there was of very high importance in Zorian’s mind.

The simulacrum moved rapidly through the streets of Cyoria, using his own two feet to move around

instead of wasting mana on teleportation. He wore a featureless white mask over his face and his

other features were hidden with heavy clothing and layers of privacy wards. The original and the

other simulacrums similarly hid their identity. It was likely they would come face-to-face with Red

Robe at some point, and there was no point in making things easy for him by openly identifying

themselves as Zorian Kazinski. Silverlake knew who Zorian was, of course, but she was also an

untrusting bitch, and it might take a while for her and Red Robe to set aside their differences and

start working together. If Zorian could keep his identity secret for a few extra hours with his disguise,

he would not consider this a wasted effort.

As he approached Jornak’s house, the simulacrum grew more cautious. He slowed his pace, circling

the house wearily. He knew how to bypass the house wards, of course. He’d done it dozens of

times, by now. However, if Red Robe was really here, he had likely modified or upgraded those just

in case. It’s what Zorian himself would have done and there was no reason to assume Red Robe

had been any less cautious.

His paranoia soon proved itself well-warranted. As he studied the house wards, he noticed they had

been subtly changed. He was lucky, or maybe unlucky, because this was pretty damning proof of

Red Robe’s activity.

Five minutes later, the simulacrum managed to get past the defenses and entered the house. What

greeted him was eerie silence. The house was dark and abandoned, and it only took a few moments

for the simulacrum to realize that both Veyers and Jornak were gone. Walking around the place, the

simulacrum could see numerous signs of frantic activity scattered around the place: closets and

cabinets flung open, drawers ripped out of their sockets, piles of clothes and small items scattered

all over the floor…

It wasn’t just that Veyers and Jornak were gone – they had gathered up anything of real worth from

the house before leaving. This was an evacuation, not a kidnapping.

The simulacrum cast a number of divination spells, trying to see if he could get some clues about

where the two had gone, but failed to find anything. That was to be expected, though – it would have

been shockingly incompetent of Red Robe to leave a trail behind him as he evacuated the place.

The simulacrum stood in the living room of the abandoned house, fiddling with a small white

statuette of a dragon that he found on the floor, lost in thought for a while. Did this prove that Veyers

was Red Robe? Well, not exactly… but it did prove that he was connected to him somehow. Jornak

was also gone, which could mean a lot of things. Maybe the lawyer was the real Red Robe.

Admittedly, the Red Robe that Zorian met in the past was roughly his own height and thus a poor

match for Jornak, who was a fully grown man, but that could be accomplished easily through

shapeshifting. Or maybe the time-looping Veyers just appreciated what the older man had done for

his old self and so had taken him to safety as well. Whatever the case, they were all gone now, and

there was little point in staying here when there were so many other things to be done.

He thought about torching the whole place out of spite, but it was better not to escalate things for

now. Red Robe clearly cared a lot for these two, so burning down Jornak’s place might genuinely

anger him. Sure, they were already irreconcilable enemies, but doing this would make things

personal. He might go after Zorian’s friends and family sooner than he otherwise would have.

Before he moved on, the simulacrum quickly contacted the original and the other copy to find out

what was happening on their end. They were both currently fighting and couldn’t talk much. Should

he go help them? No… the whole point of creating so many simulacrums was to pursue many

different goals simultaneously. He would just have to trust the other two would be able to complete

their task on their own.

Instead he went north, towards Knyazov Dveri.

It was time to see what Silverlake was up to.

- break -

While simulacrum number three was checking out Jornak’s house, number four had rushed into the

tunnels beneath Cyoria to contact the aranea living beneath the city.

Once, the Cyorian web had been his closest allies. They had taught him how to control his telepathic

abilities, helped him make sense of the invasion, and provided a semblance of companionship in a

world where most things were painfully short-lived. Spear of Resolve, the aranean matriarch, had

intended to betray him in the end… but he was still devastated when they were all erased out of the

time loop.

Part of his desire to see them as soon as possible was definitely emotional. Everything he knew

about the time loop suggested they would be alive and well out here in the real world, but he had to

see that with his own eyes. In his mind, he couldn’t help but draw parallels between the aranea and

the temporary loopers that had sacrificed themselves so that he could cross over into the real world.

He needed some good news right now.

However, there was also a practical side to his visit. Zach and Zorian were quite capable of

dismantling the entire invasion in a matter of days, halting it in its tracks… but that was without Red

Robe’s interference. Plus, who could forget Silverlake was also working against them? Thus, the

idea of just quickly shutting down the invasion was untenable. However, this did not mean they

would just sit back and do nothing about them. If they wanted to do serious damage to the invaders,

the best time to do so was right now, at the very beginning of the month, before Red Robe and

Silverlake had a chance to warn all their allies about the danger.

They had to move quickly, and that meant recruiting helpers… and the Cyorian aranea were one of

the few powerful groups that Zorian felt they could win over to their side very quickly.

Apparently Red Robe agreed with his assessment, because when simulacrum number four arrived

on the outskirts of the aranean settlement he found them locked in a desperate battle against Red

Robe.

The battle had clearly been raging for quite some time. Mutilated aranean bodies and arachnoid

viscera lay scattered everywhere, and several of the caves and tunnels had been collapsed by both

sides in an attempt to get rid of the other. A choking cloud of dust lingered in the air, reducing

visibility.

Red Robe was just as Zorian remembered him. A bright red robe covered him completely, hiding

most of his features, and a patch of magical darkness obscured his face. His movements were

unhurried and methodical, though instead of painlessly and instantly ‘killing’ the aranea in front of

him he mostly relied on various force spells to crush them and cut them apart. The sight of him

fearlessly advancing forward like an invincible juggernaut and killing aranea in very brutal and bloody

ways was probably very intimidating to the spiders. Zorian suspected Red Robe was trying to crush

their will to fight and scatter them before he ran out of mana.

Simulacrum number four quickly realized that Red Robe in front of him was a simulacrum, just like

him. It made sense, really. Much like Zorian had created a bunch of copies to perform several tasks

simultaneously, Red Robe had likely done the same.

He immediately rushed into the battle, firing a powerful incineration ray at Red Robe’s back. The

other simulacrum did not show any signs of surprise, as if he had fully expected the interruption. He

simply turned to the side in a smooth, practiced motion, blocking both Zorian’s spell and one from a

nearby aranea.

Simulacrum number four did not speak, and neither did his opponent. They simply circled each other

and kept launching probing spells at one another, testing each other’s skills and spell selection. The

simulacrum was a bit disappointed at Red Robe’s silence. Based on his previous experiences with

the third time looper, he had expected Red Robe to try and strike up a conversation or start

monologuing. That could have given Zorian an opportunity to figure something out about his

opponent and his goals.

Probably why he was staying silent. Oh well.

The aranea did not interfere in their fight much. Some of the angrier ones, who had lost friends and

family members to the assault, kept trying to launch surprise attacks at Red Robe whenever they

spotted an opening. Many of those ended up dying, since their attacks exposed them to Red Robe’s

retaliation. Zorian tried to keep Red Robe too occupied to focus on the aranea much, but there was

only so much he could do. Thankfully, most of the aranea had had the common sense to pull back

deeper into their settlement to regroup and recover their strength.

After a while of this sort of spell exchange, Red Robe suddenly stopped. He appeared indecisive for

a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but he eventually just shook his head minutely and

reached for a short spell rod on his belt. Zorian tensed and prepared for the fight to escalate, but it

turned out he had misjudged the situation. The rod was a simple recall spell. The moment Red Robe

touched it, his body blurred for a second and then he was gone.

Zorian’s simulacrum did not try to pursue. He was here to save the aranea and recruit them as allies,

not to take out a disposable pawn that Red Robe could recreate in a couple of minutes. This was

already a victory.

He relaxed and waited for the aranea to approach him, reasoning that trying to be proactive wouldn’t

be a good idea at the moment. He may have saved them, but the aranea were still obviously tense

and might lash out if they felt pressured.

Thankfully, he did not have to wait long. It took less than two minutes for the aranea to assemble a

welcoming party that cautiously approached him. They were visibly surprised when he responded to

their greetings with telepathy and fumbled in indecision when he asked to talk to Spear of Resolve.

The matriarch was true to her name, however. She quickly interrupted the talks and announced she

would be arriving to talk to him personally, brushing aside the outraged protests of her subordinates.

Soon he was standing in front of her again, the two guards she brought along standing behind her

and giving him their best menacing looks. To most people, she would doubtlessly look like any other

aranea – a giant black jumping spider, same as any other. For the simulacrum, though, the sight

brought back a flood of memories rushing to his mind.

He wanted to punch her right in that big-eyed, manipulative face… but also hug her and tell her he

was glad to see her. This was probably similar to how Zach had felt upon seeing him on Cyoria’s

train station, so long ago.

Except that he had much better impulse control than Zach and wasn’t going to punch her.

Or hug her, for that matter.

[Greetings, friend,] Spear of Resolve said politely. [I am grateful for the help you provided us in our

hour of need. We are not ungrateful people and will surely find something to reward you with, but I

sense there is more to this visit than just this.]

[True,] the simulacrum sent back. [We have many things to talk about.]

The matriarch tapped her front legs against the ground curiously.

[Curious. There was a curious note of nostalgia bleeding over into your messages,] she pointed out.

[Ah. Sorry about that,] he said, wincing slightly. [I can’t help it. You don’t remember this, but we knew

each other.]

[Oh? I find that very hard to believe,] the matriarch said.

[It’s true,] the copy insisted. [We worked quite closely in the past.]

The matriarch sent him a note of patronized amusement.

[I have a very good memory when it comes to people, and you seem like a very noteworthy person. I

would surely remember if I’d had the fortune to meet a mage of your caliber,] she said. [In particular,

the level of control you have over your Gift would immediately make you stand out in the sea of

people I have met over the years.]

An entirely reasonable argument. Sadly, the simulacrum didn’t have time to take things slowly and

delicately guide the matriarch to the correct conclusion. He decided to take a risk and be totally

blunt.

[I come from the future,] he told her.

The matriarch was silent for a moment. Several other aranea in the vicinity shifted in place from

either amusement or incredulousness. They were clearly listening in on their conversations through

their link with the matriarch. Nothing out of Zorian’s expectations, really.

[That’s… quite a claim you’re making, friend,] the matriarch said. She seemed more intrigued than

dismissive, which surprised Zorian a little. He supposed that, even if she did not take his claim

seriously, she wanted to hear his clarification.

[Zorian Kazinski,] said the simulacrum, taking off his mask as a show of trust. If this worked, he

would be working closely with these people anyway. [You can just call me Zorian.]

[Zorian, then,] the matriarch agreed. [Zorian, you surely realize that great claims like that require

great proof to be taken seriously?]

Zorian no longer had the matriarch’s memory packets, which meant that the method he used to

employ to get her cooperation in the past was no longer possible. However, that was okay. He had

other means of catching her attention.

[Of course I do,] the simulacrum said. [I can even show you my memories of the timeline I came

from.]

[Come now, Zorian,] the matriarch scolded. [Any memory you show me could be fabricated entirely.

That proves nothing.]

[Not quite,] the copy responded, a small grin on his face. [If I showed you some random scene with

little relation to you, then yes, it could easily be a forgery. But what if I showed you a detailed map of

your inner settlement, including the insides of your secret research room and your treasury? What if I

demonstrated detailed knowledge about your secret research and your trading networks – the sort of

things only your most respected elders have access to? What if I told you the names of every aranea

that makes up your web, described what the insides of your private rooms look like, and

demonstrated I could mimic the speech patterns and personality traits of a great many of your

subordinates? Such things do not necessarily prove I come from the future, but certainly

prove something, no? How could I possibly know that?]

The matriarch’s legs began to twitch uncontrollably.

A small commotion broke out among the aranea surrounding them. The simulacrum could tell there

was a heated discussion going on in the background.

“Enough,” Spear of Resolve suddenly said, speaking up verbally for the first time since the meeting

began. Obviously she wanted the simulacrum to hear this too.

“But honored matriarch!” one of the guards protested.

“I’ve decided!” she said firmly, spinning around in place to stare down the guard, who shrank back at

her admonishment. She then turned back towards the simulacrum.

[I’ll open my mind to you,] the matriarch said telepathically. [Show me these ‘memories’ of yours.]

Zorian’s copy did just that. He tapped into the stored memories inside his head, reproducing them as

best as he was able. For several hours the aranea watched in uncomfortable silence as the

simulacrum laid their closely guarded secrets bare to them. He showed them his conversations with

Spear of Resolve, Novelty and the various guards and ambassadors he had interacted with in the

past.

By the time he was finally done, the matriarch was clearly disturbed at the amount of information he

possessed. It was as the simulacrum had said - it wasn’t ironclad proof that he was from the future,

but it did mean he had access to just about everything about them at some point. That was

disturbing enough on its own.

[This… how could you possibly know all of this?] the matriarch asked hesitantly. She usually tried to

project an air of certainty and confidence when interacting with him, even when she was secretly

bothered behind the façade. There was none of that now, however. [Even if you’re from the future,

even if we worked together in this future, I would never–]

[You died,] Zorian’s copy told her bluntly, cutting her off. [You all died. That cloaked man that just

attacked you earlier? In the future I know… I was not strong enough.]

[Oh,] the matriarch said, deflating.

[You were supposedly allied with us, but you searched our city for anything of value the moment we

died,] one of the aranea elder interjected, accusation clear in her voice.

[You would have done the same in my place,] he said, wholly unrepentant.

The aranea said nothing to that.

[I am curious,] the matriarch eventually said, picking her words carefully. [If I were to just tell you to

go away and refuse to have anything to do with you… what would you do, oh mighty time traveler?]

[I would respect your decision,] the simulacrum shrugged.

[Truly?] the matriarch asked, sounding very skeptical.

[Why not? I would just go to one of the other aranean webs in the area,] Zorian’s copy said. [It’s not

like you’re the only aranean web that I worked with.]

Every aranea in the room suddenly became very quiet and still.

And simulacrum number four could not help but smile smugly, for he knew he had them.

- break -

While the two simulacrums pursued their own tasks elsewhere in the city, the original had what was

arguably the most important task of all – he had to check up on Zach and help him if he was in

danger. He wouldn’t put it past Red Robe and Silverlake to focus on killing him as their very first

priority.

It’s what Zorian would have done in their place, after all.

His fears turned out to have been only half-right. When he arrived at the Noveda estate, he found

the place on fire and wracked with explosions. Destructive beams punched straight through the

thick, warded walls of the building, triggering various alarms and countermeasures. Clearly an attack

on Zach was already in progress. It was good that he had woken up his fellow time traveler with that

ritual, or else Zach would have probably met a quick and ignoble end at the hand of his attackers.

Well… attacker, singular. When he reached the sight of the battle itself, he only found Red Robe

fighting Zach. Silverlake was nowhere to be seen.

Very curious. Even if she was wary of Red Robe, she should have at least cooperated with him on

this.

In any case, this Red Robe was the same as the one that had attacked the aranea in the tunnels

below. It was just a simulacrum.

Once Zorian joined the fight, this second simulacrum seemed to realize the attack had failed and

that persisting would just waste mana, so it just… dismissed itself.

What an underwhelming outcome. What was Red Robe doing, if he was so wary of really committing

himself anywhere? He didn’t like this. He really didn’t like this…

He turned towards Zach and winced. He hadn’t noticed it while he had been fighting Red Robe’s

simulacrum, but the other boy had a large bleeding gash across the chest.

“H-Hey…” Zach panted. “Thanks for the wakeup call back there. If you had been just a moment late,

I would have probably never woken up. I, a-ah…”

His knees gave out suddenly, causing him to tip over. Zorian quickly rushed forward and caught him

just before he was going to slam head-first into the floor.

“Shit…” Zorian swore, inspecting the wound. His medical magic was a joke, but he could at least

assess the severity of an open wound like this one. “You lost so much blood there. How were you

even standing for so long?”

“It’s not the f-first time…” Zach gasped, pressing his trembling fingers over the wound. The bleeding

immediately lessened somewhat. “I’ll live.”

Zorian sighed. He would live, sure… but he would be pretty much incapacitated for the next day or

two, even with the best medical care in the country. This was terrible news.

“I’m glad you made it out,” Zach said with a trembling voice.

[Don’t speak,] Zorian told him telepathically, picking him up like a baby. Well, he tried to, at least.

Picking up another person was a little bit too much for him, so he first had to cast some spells to

lighten the load, but he managed it in the end. He then immediately set off in the direction of the

nearest hospital. [You’re going to aggravate your wound. Also, damn you’re heavy.]

[I’m doing you a favor,] Zach responded back. [Didn’t you say you wanted to work out more when we

get out?]

[Not like this, you asshole,] Zorian grumbled.

[Wait…] Zach suddenly frowned. [You… you’re wounded too!]

Zorian gave him an incredulous look. What… oh.

[Ah, no,] Zorian said. [My mana is in chaos because the tunneler toad’s dimensional perception

ability unraveled when I abandoned my body back in the time loop.]

It was scary how perceptive Zach was sometimes. Zorian didn’t even think he was showing any

signs of mana instability on the outside, but clearly he was wrong.

[Oh yeah,] Zach said, immediately calming down. [Still, doesn’t that mean–]

[I’ll be held back in what I can do for at least a couple of days, yes,] Zorian confirmed.

[Damn it! Nothing ever goes right about this!] Zach raged.

[I wouldn’t say that,] Zorian said. He tracked down the nearest potion store and teleported them both

towards it. It was closed at this time of day, but breaking in was a simple matter. He idly wondered

whether a medical emergency like this counted as a valid reason to perform a burglary, but then

decided he didn’t care. He would anonymously pay the shopkeeper back for the damages he

caused. [I’m sure Red Robe is feeling pretty aggrieved right now. He almost had you, but he failed in

the end. Plus, my simulacrum just stopped him from getting rid of the aranea beneath the city.]

He quickly picked up the most powerful wound closing and blood replenishing potions in the store

and fed them to Zach, who immediately showed a positive reaction. His skin got back some of its

color and the wound seemingly closed, though Zorian knew it was still very much present beneath

the surface.

Zach immediately tried to get up on his own two feet, the idiot. He collapsed back immediately,

having aggravated his wound.

“Let’s… just get you to the nearest hospital, alright?” Zorian said, face-palming at the sight.

“Zorian, listen,” Zach said. “When you left through the exit and the time loop reset itself, I lingered

behind for a bit. Just to see what would happen to you and Silverlake over the next few restarts, you

know?”

Zorian raised his eyebrow at him. “And?”

“You were back,” Zach said. “Both of you. You didn’t remember anything about the time loop but you

were walking and talking as normal. You were just like any other person stuck in the time loop,

unaware of the passage of time past the summer festival. Man, talking to your old self was freaky, I

tell you. I all but forgot how unfriendly and sensitive you were back then. Did I tell you I’m really glad

you made it out in the end?”

“You did,” Zorian confirmed.

“Oh yeah… what did you do with the–” Zach started to ask, before being cut off by Zorian.

“I killed him,” Zorian said curtly. “Sent his soul to the afterlife.”

“I… umm… shit,” Zach fumbled. “That’s kind of… brutal?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Zorian asked, uncomfortable with this line of questioning. “I don’t

know how to make a new body for him. Maybe I never will. I’d have to either keep him in stasis for

years and years before finally releasing him into an alien world where a stranger has usurped his

life… or having him accompany me as a powerless ghost looking over my shoulder, constantly

getting his face rubbed in at the fact I’m so much better than him at everything. Isn’t that a cruel and

horrifying fate to inflict on someone?”

“I… don’t know,” Zach admitted after a while.

“I know I’m not the same person as him by this point,” Zorian said quietly, “but I would hate that with

every fiber of my being. I… don’t think I’d ever get over it. Maybe I’m just a selfish monster trying to

justify my crimes, but I think I’m doing him a favor. Alanic says the afterlife is still a thing, even after

the gods stopped talking to people. For all his faults, I don’t think the old Zorian had done anything

truly heinous in his life… there should be a good outcome waiting for him there. Something he’d

never get back here with us.”

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds, and then Zorian cracked his knuckles before

picking Zach up again. Thank the gods for lightening spells.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Zorian admitted. “Let just get you to a hospital and call it a day. We’ll

just have to leave the rest to our simulacrums. Now that I think about it, maybe Red Robe is onto

something by only sending simulacrums to tackle problems and never appearing in person. Sure, it

makes him more likely to fail and get beaten back, but it also makes every failure more

inconsequential…”

He babbled about all sorts of things as he walked through the city. He was mostly out of mana by

this point, since pretty much all his simulacrums had been tapping into them for their own purposes,

so he couldn’t simply teleport to the hospital. However, it was fine – Zach had stopped bleeding by

this point, so he wasn’t going to die any time soon. He should make use of this breather to make

some golem simulacrums and replace the current ectoplasmic ones with them. Of course, the golem

simulacrums were expensive so he would have to raid some of the Ibasan caches for money and

materials. Plus, he needed a proper workshop and–

He suddenly stopped and sighed internally. So many things to do. So little time and mana to play

with. The only thing that made him feel better was that Red Robe and Silverlake were probably

faced with choices just as difficult as theirs.

Hopefully they had chosen their priorities better than their opponents.

- break -

When simulacrum number three arrived at the spot of Silverlake’s hideout, he found no signs of

fighting or forced entry in the vicinity. However, that did not actually tell him much. For all he knew,

Silverlake had some kind of secret entrance into her pocket dimension, and could simply walk in any

time she pleased, wards be damned. Hell, perhaps the old Silverlake had simply let her in. It was

hardly a given that the two would fight to the death once they met.

It all depended on whether the time looper Silverlake wanted to kill her old self to take her life and

belongings back, or if she wanted to recruit her into her plans.

Or maybe she intended to simply ignore her old self entirely. After all, simply coming here was highly

dangerous, since Zach and Zorian knew about this place, and it was an obvious place to set up an

ambush for her.

Anyway, the first task simulacrum three currently faced was checking if the old Silverlake was still

alive and inside. If she was, then he needed to know if the time looper Silverlake had already visited

her and tried to recruit her.

To find that out, he could rely on slowly using exotic divination on her hideout while carefully

avoiding being found out… but that would take a lot of time and mana and he didn’t want to bother.

Instead he simply made an unearthly racket just out of her pocket dimension, screaming obscenities

at the treacherous old witch until she decided to come out to confront him.

Which she did. She stomped out of the pocket dimension, visibly fuming and glaring at him.

The simulacrum immediately decided she probably hadn’t been visited by her time looper self. She

had approached him too carelessly, like she had no idea what he was capable of. She would have

been far more cautious if the other Silverlake had warned her about him.

Still, he had to make sure.

“Boy, what the hell are you shouting for!?” Silverlake shouted, stopping some distance away from

him. “Coming here in the dead of the night, at three in the morning, shouting all these obscenities at

a poor old woman like me… what is the world coming to these days!? Haven’t your parents taught

you to respect your elders!? Bow down and apologize or I’m going to poison your whole family, you

hear me!?”

“I just wanted to get your attention,” the simulacrum told her honestly.

That only made her angrier.

“Listen, I’m kind of in a hurry… did you perhaps get visited lately by an ugly old crone that

looks just like you?”

Silverlake raised her hand and fired a weak lightning bolt. Well, relatively speaking, since that spell

could have inflicted serious damage to a normal person.

Zorian’s simulacrum, though? He simply copied his mentor Xvim and backhanded the lightning bolt

to the side. Rather than char his hand, the bolt was deflected harmlessly into the nearby ground,

creating a small crater in the forest soil.

Silverlake’s posture instantly changed, becoming warier and more alert.

“No, seriously… did someone who looks just like you visit you recently and try to kill you or recruit

you? Someone who knows all your secrets and abilities?” he again asked.

“Who are you?” Silverlake said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously and her hands twitching with half-

formed spells.

The simulacrum clacked his tongue. She was totally ignorant of everything, he was sure of it. Time

looper Silverlake had not visited this place.

But why? Did she really not care about her old self, or was she just being paranoid? He hadn’t

arrived here particularly quickly – if Silverlake wanted to travel here from Cyoria, she would have

arrived way before he did. In all likelihood, she would have finished up before he had a chance to get

here and intercept her.

“Hey! Are you deaf or something?” Silverlake shouted, kicking a nearby stone in his direction. It was

surprisingly accurate, flying straight at his forehead. She had a pretty good kick. Of course, Zorian

just dodged the stone with practiced ease, so it ultimately amounted to nothing.

He could kill her, he realized. Even if time looper Silverlake wanted her dead, there was no

guarantee that old Silverlake would be grateful to them once they saved her. She was an incredibly

cynical person, and would simply see two young fools she could exploit to her advantage. She might

work with them out of a sense of self-preservation, but she would be constantly looking for an angle

to exploit and probably wouldn’t want to do anything that placed her into significant danger.

What was the point of such an ally?

“Here. Catch,” he said, throwing a small stone disc at her. She did not bother catching it, simply

stepping back and letting it hit the ground. She then used a nearby fallen branch to suspiciously

poke at it.

The simulacrum rolled his eyes at her.

“What the hell is this thing?” she asked.

“It’s an illusion stone,” the simulacrum said. “I recorded a rather interesting scene in it. You can study

it later in the privacy of your own abode. Oh, and by the way? You should probably change your

warding scheme as soon as possible. You should also collapse any secret entrances into your

place, even if you think you’re the only one who knows about them.”

He turned to leave.

“Now wait just a moment here, you little brat! You’re just going to leave without explaining any of the

crap you just unloaded into my lap?” Silverlake demanded.

“Yes,” Zorian’s copy nodded. “I decided not to kill you. Don’t make me regret it, alright?”

Before she could respond, he teleported away.

He didn’t want to linger around Silverlake’s place. While setting up an ambush around her hideout

might have seemed like a good way to get the time looping version of her, Zorian felt something

wasn’t right there.

He had to make sure Alanic, Kael and Lukav were fine. Silverlake could wait.

- break -

While Zorian and the other simulacrums were teleporting around and wracking their heads to figure

out what the enemy was planning, simulacrum number two was bored. His job was to secure the

house and watch out for Red Robe or Silverlake staging an attack on his family. However, he had

already done all he could to secure the house and no attack was happening.

The hours passed, and eventually he found himself in front of Kirielle’s room. Hmm… the morning

was already here, wasn’t it? Didn’t that mean it was about time for Kirielle to wake up?

He rubbed his hands sinisterly, an evil grin on his face. It had been so long since he had a chance to

wake up Kirielle. He liked to sleep in, and the time loop never really changed that, so it was usually

her that woke him up.

He entered her room and crouched next to her bed. She was covered up to her neck in a blanket,

with only her face visible. She was blissfully unaware of Zorian crouching next to her, a look of

peace and contentment on her face.

The simulacrum considered how he should go about doing this. Jumping on her, like she liked to do

to him, had an air of poetic justice on it. However, it didn’t feel right. He was too big and heavy, and it

would be a bit too much for a prank.

Dropping a bucket of water on her like she had when she had thought he was a shapeshifter?

No, that would get the bed wet and mother would freak out on him.

Hmm…

Oh well, he’d just go with the classic.

“Good morning, sister!” he suddenly shouted in her ear. “Morning, morning, MORNING!”

She woke up screaming and flailing, and eventually fell out of the bed.

He laughed at her. Ah, he needed that…

“Zorian, you jerk!” she shouted at him, flailing her little arms at him like a windmill. She was like a

little angry kitten, though, so it just made him laugh harder.

She eventually kicked him out of the room so she could switch out of her pajamas. Once she was

out, she gave him a curious look.

“How come you’re awake?” she asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” the simulacrum said.

“Oh,” she said. She looked at him hopefully. “Hey, can you show me some magic? Please?”

He spent the next half an hour entertaining Kirielle, casting various spells for her amusement, until

the original contacted him and told him to stop wasting mana on frivolities like that. What a jerk. The

mana drain on those illusions was totally negligible!

He watched Kirielle deflate when he told her he had to go pack and couldn’t play with her anymore.

She looked like she wanted to ask him something but eventually just chickened out, staring at the

floor like a kicked puppy instead.

He sighed internally. He knew what she wanted to ask, of course. She wanted him to take her to

Cyoria with him. But doing that would be… irresponsible.

Short-sighted.

Stupid.

He watched Kirielle for a few more seconds, remembering all the promises he made to his little sister

over the many restarts he shared with her. He promised he wouldn’t forget her. He promised he

would teach her magic.

He promised he would bring her with him to Cyoria.

Just as she was about to run off, Zorian placed his hand on her shoulder, causing her to halt in her

tracks and look at him in surprise. Her lip quivered slightly.

“Hey, Kirielle…” he told her with a mischievous smile. “Do you want to come with me to Cyoria?”

Simulacrum number two could practically imagine Zorian screaming at him in the near future,

explaining in great detail what an idiot he was being.

He didn’t care, though.

The smile on her face when he asked her that question made it all worth it.

Chapter 093

Shelter in the Storm

Sometimes he could be so stupid, Zorian lamented. He had known that his simulacrums tended to be

more impulsive and whimsical than himself. It seemed to be an intrinsic trait of every one of his

copies, no matter how carefully he made them or how closely they were connected to him. They may

be very much like him, but they weren’t him. The moment they realized they were just a simulacrum

that would not live past a few hours or days, their perspective on long-term consequences would get

subtly skewed compared to his own. After all, more likely than not it wouldn’t be them who would

have to deal with those when the time finally came.

He also knew that giving his simulacrums unpleasant or boring tasks had a good chance of coming

back to bite him in the ass. His simulacrums did not mind dying for him, but they were not at all

afraid of inconveniencing him. In fact, they often seemed to relish the idea.

Zorian wondered what it said about him that his simulacrums behaved that way, but that was a

thought for another time. The point was that, despite knowing all of that, he had still left his

simulacrum in charge of dashing Kirielle’s hopes of going to Cyoria. He should have known that was

going to be a problem, but he thought it would be a simple matter of the simulacrum refusing

Mother’s offer while Kirielle remained quiet on the sidelines. This was, after all, what usually

happened when Zorian didn’t want to bring Kirielle with him. All the simulacrum had to do was just

retread his steps and be on his merry way! Instead his copy got bored and actively sought Kirielle

out to hang out with, wasting their precious mana on frivolous entertainment, and then got all

emotional when it was time to say goodbye…

Ugh. Just like the offending simulacrum predicted, Zorian had been furious. It was a stupid, short-

sighted decision! Yes, sending her off to Koth with their parents would be a massive disappointment

for her, but at least she’d be out of danger! That was more important than making her momentarily

happy!

The simulacrum was completely unapologetic about it, too.

“What’s done is done,” his copy told him over their telepathic link. “I already gave her my word I’m

taking her with me. If you have a problem with that, you can come over here and personally inform

her that you’ve changed your mind and won’t be taking her with you after all…”

“You bastard!” Zorian fumed at him. “I should dismiss you for that!”

“That would leave Kirielle and the rest of the family completely defenseless until you sent a

replacement,” the simulacrum pointed out. “Besides, do you really think I care about that? From my

very first moment, I knew my time was fleeting.”

Sadly, true. Since his simulacrums were willing to die and sacrifice themselves for his sake, the

thought of dying did not bother them much. Thus, threatening to unmake them was largely

ineffective.

“I just don’t understand why you did that,” Zorian complained. “We could have just taken Kirielle to

Cyoria in a month or two, once the whole situation has hopefully been resolved and she’s back from

Koth. There is no need to take her there now, when the situation there is at its most dangerous!”

“When, if not now?” the simulacrum disagreed. “Even if we can resolve everything and save the city,

the consequences are bound to be immense. Even a failed invasion will make our parents perceive

Cyoria as a place of unspeakable danger. You think they will let her live in the city after that? Even

for a few days? Come on. This is probably the last time we can plausibly take Kirielle to Cyoria

without literally kidnapping her.”

Zorian frowned. He hadn’t really thought of that. It was true that no matter how the situation with the

invasion was resolved, it was bound to complicate things. Plus, now that he thought about it a little,

Kirielle would have to go back to school at some point soon. It wasn’t like she could visit a different

city for several weeks at a time, then. Come to think of it, that was probably the reason why she was

so excited to make this trip with him now. She knew this was one of her last chances to experience

something like this in the near future…

He sighed internally. For all of its blessings, he sometimes worried that the time loop had damaged

his thinking. For more than a decade, anything that did not resolve itself within the span of a month

was largely irrelevant. He did consider the future a lot, but that was all highly theoretical and often

directed at the far future rather than something only a few months later.

Still. Even with all of that in mind, bringing Kirielle to the epicenter of their clash with Red Robe and

Silverlake was simply a terrible idea.

“Besides,” his copy continued, “by bringing Kirielle along we actually have a legitimate excuse to rent

a room at Imaya’s place. Kael is much more willing to trust us if we come along with Kirielle. And it’s

not like we don’t have a plan to evacuate–”

“Those are just excuses you thought up afterwards to justify your decision,” Zorian told him.

“Well… yes,” the simulacrum admitted after a short pause. “Yes, I admit that. It’s still true, though,

and I’m not going to go back on my word. Our word. You promised you’re not going to just forget her

once we’re out there in the real world. Now you want to just stick her on a ship to Koth and put her

out of your mind while you do your stuff?”

“That ‘stuff’ is a matter of life and death and getting her out of danger doesn’t mean I’m going to

simply forget about her afterwards!” Zorian snapped. “I just want her to be safe. She’s a prime target

and I’m just a little bit busy at the moment. It’s not the time for this!”

“Forget it,” his copy sighed. “I just… I won’t do it, okay? I already said it. What’s done is done. I’m not

going to turn around and tell her it was all a mistake and that I changed my mind. It would kill her. If

you think this is such a huge mistake, come over and do it yourself. Go tell her that her dream trip is

canceled, I dare you.”

The simulacrum then terminated their connection, signaling it considered the conversation over.

After taking several deep breaths and calming down somewhat, Zorian decided that the simulacrum

was right about one thing: he should definitely be dealing with this problem personally. As he noted

in his earlier lament, it was stupid of him to assign a task like this to a simulacrum to begin with, and

only he could truly fix it. Or at least stop the problem from getting worse.

Besides, there was no need for him to stay in Cyoria at the moment. Previously, he had been

worried that his simulacrum would get dispelled in the fighting and that he would need to constantly

replace them… but that was far less of a concern, now. The first golem simulacrums had been

placed into service by now, replacing two of his ectoplasmic simulacrums with a more mana efficient

and resilient group. Golem simulacrums were very difficult to neutralize – even punching a hole

through the chest or blowing off a limb would not be enough to put them down for good. That

extreme resilience, all by itself, should allow his copies to clash with the invaders and Red Robe’s

simulacrums without fear.

Additionally, he couldn’t really afford to start anything big while Zach was still incapacitated and

vulnerable. Taking some time off to figure out what to do about his family and friends was… doable.

Thus, not long after his argument with his simulacrum, Zorian found himself back in Cirin. He told the

simulacrum to make himself scarce for a while and then seamlessly took over his place.

Well, mostly seamlessly.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Kirielle asked him suspiciously, narrowing her eyes at him.

“You… you aren’t thinking on going back on your word, are you?”

She didn’t seem panicked, more outraged at the idea. She placed her hands on her hips and pouted

at him in a way that was probably supposed to look angry but looked more like she had an upset

stomach or something.

“No take-backs!” she declared, pointing her finger at him. “Mom says that’s not allowed! You said

you’re taking me with you, and I’m going!”

Zorian clacked his tongue in distaste. All he did was stare at her a little, and she immediately started

jumping at this one specific conclusion… how judgmental. Never mind that she was essentially

correct here, was his old self so bad that this was a legitimate first conclusion she came up to?

…okay, yeah, he could kind of see her reasoning here.

“I didn’t say anything about not taking you,” Zorian said slowly.

“Then what?” she asked curiously.

“I’m missing some of my school books,” Zorian told her. “I’d appreciate it if whoever took them

returned them to me before we leave the house.”

“Err, yeah, I will– I mean, I’m sure they’ll turn up in your room by the time I finish packing,” Kirielle

fumbled, punctuating her statement with a nervous laugh.

She then gave him one final suspicious look before running off upstairs to finish her packing.

The simulacrum he had displaced had been watching the whole exchange through his senses. His

copy did not comment on his actions in any way, but Zorian could feel the simulacrum’s amusement

at how things turned out.

“Shut up, idiot,” Zorian whispered under his breath. “This is all your fault, anyway.”

He did not need to speak up verbally, of course, but it made him feel slightly better to do so. Why

hadn’t he dismissed his stupid copy, again?

Oh, right. He didn’t want to waste mana and he had a task for him later.

In any case, nothing of real note happened until Ilsa knocked on their door, just like she always did

at the start of the month, and Zorian volunteered to check up on that.

Sure enough, he found Ilsa waiting for him behind the door. After an appraising glance, she adjusted

her glasses and guessed his identity.

“Zorian Kazinski?” she asked.

“That’s me,” Zorian confirmed. “Come in, Miss Zileti.”

“Oh, you know me?” she asked in mild surprise, stepping into the house.

“Err, kind of,” Zorian said. “Someone pointed you out to me. You’re a teacher from the academy,

right?”

“That’s right,” Ilsa said. “I didn’t know I’m that famous. Hopefully you heard only nice things about

me, yes?”

She gave him a small smile, and Zorian awkwardly returned it.

She didn’t remember anything. That is, of course she didn’t remember anything. He and Zach had

already done a check of the various temporary loopers to see if any of them made it out in soul form

like Zorian. The results were as expected as they were disappointing. They were all alone in this.

Nobody else had made it out.

It was strange and more than a little painful for Zorian to see Ilsa like this. He had worked with her

for nearly a year, and she had been one of the people he had been relatively close to. Now that Ilsa

was dead, the new one had no idea who he was.

The same was true for Alanic, Taiven, Kael, Xvim, and so many others. They were alive again, but

they were not people he had spent all those months working with. He could rebuild these

relationships, but without the common goal of escaping the time loop and the limited ability to

interact with people outside the group, the nature of those relationships would completely differ. In

the meantime, he had to interact with all these people while constantly walking on eggshells

because he subconsciously viewed them as friends and allies, and had a year’s worth of habits and

instincts to reinforce that… while they just viewed him as some stupid teenage kid acting a little

weird around them.

He’d manage. He totally would.

But damn was this making him depressed…

“Mister Kazinski? Are you alright?” Ilsa asked him, breaking him out of his self-pity.

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “Just… thinking about some things. It’s nothing important.”

He turned the scroll in his hands a few times before casually directing his mana to flow along the

sides of the seal, causing it to pop off without resistance. He then glanced at the certificate inside for

the sake of appearances and set it aside.

“That’s pretty impressive,” Ilsa noted. “Although you held onto the scroll for a while, I could tell you

spent most of that time distracted with other thoughts. Once you actually focused on the task of

removing the seal, you did it quickly and easily. I see someone is continuing in Daimen’s footsteps.”

Once, the comparison to Daimen would see him bristling inside at the slight. Now it was just a mildly

exasperating statement. He would likely never be totally okay with being compared to his oldest

brother like that, but these comparisons no longer had the same sting they once did.

“Only in very general terms,” Zorian told her. “My brother and I are very different people.”

“Of course,” Ilsa smoothly agreed. “Everyone is their own person. I simply meant that you also show

signs of great talent.”

Their discussion proceeded in very predictable fashion. Once she heard he was taking Kirielle with

him to Cyoria, she brought up the possibility of renting a room at Imaya’s place, which Zorian

accepted. She also informed him that he wouldn’t get to choose his mentor like he was supposed to,

and that he was simply assigned to Xvim Chao instead. Zorian pretended he knew nothing about the

man and Ilsa pretended he was simply a normal, if slightly demanding teacher. He also chose his

electives. They were the exact same ones he had chosen the first time he had done all this, except

this time the entire process took less than a minute, since he simply told Ilsa his choices the moment

she brought the topic up.

It was all so routine and familiar that he found himself quickly slipping into a sort of practiced ‘role’ he

had learned to play over the many restarts during which he had done this. It felt comforting and

frightening at the same time. Comforting, because this was probably the first time since he had

gotten out of the time loop that he felt certain he was making the right choices. Frightening, because

he suddenly felt like he was in the time loop all over again. Like everything around him was unreal

and illusionary. Unbidden, the notion that he was still trapped in that ever-repeating month popped

into his mind and refused to go away.

He imagined himself living through this month, winning against his foes, befriending people he knew

from the time loop, changing things for the better and getting emotionally invested in it all… only for

the whole thing to turn to smoke in the end when the time loop inevitably reset itself and he woke up

in his room in Cirin, just like he always did. It was horrifying.

It was also stupid. He was definitely out of the time loop. The aranea and the mercenaries that had

been knocked out of the time loop by Red Robe were back, and Red Robe himself was again active

in the world. The spirit world was also once again accessible – he and Zach had checked that

already. All evidence pointed at them being out for real.

But the fear remained. Ilsa had finished her explanations and left, but Zorian’s mind remained

trapped in this ominous scenario for quite a while afterwards.

Sometimes he could be so stupid, Zorian lamented.

- break -

The long train ride from Cirin to Cyoria was even more boring than it usually was. This was mostly

because Zorian was not doing anything of critical importance, and thus had to refrain from tapping

into his mana reserves too much. That mana was best reserved for his simulacrums, who were out

there acquiring funds, making magic items, teleporting around, and fighting their enemies. Frivolous

uses of magic like entertaining Kirielle on the train with illusions were simply inexcusable. He had

scolded his simulacrums over these sorts of things many times in the past, so now that he was in

their position it was important that he set an example for them and show them how things should be

done.

Additionally, this was no longer the time loop, and he would have to deal with consequences that

went beyond just this one month. It was best for him to at least pretend to be a normal student mage

in front of a little tattletale like Kirielle. That meant no spellcasting at all for the moment, since

students could not bypass the wards on the train.

After an hour or so, he kind of began to understand why his simulacrums were so prone to breaking

the ‘no frivolous magics’ rule.

Still, in the end he found ways to amuse himself and Kirielle without magic. He told her stories of

some of his time looping adventures, using true stories with altered names and a few tweaks here

and there. Kirielle complained the stories were too fantastical and ridiculous after a while, so they

started a drawing competition instead. Zorian had actually learned how to draw reasonably well over

the long course of the time loop, but he was nowhere near good enough to match Kirielle, so she

always won.

His sister did not mind, though. Even though it was an unfair competition right from the start, she

always wanted to keep going for another round. The little imp never got tired of winning.

“Now stopping in Korsa,” a disembodied voice echoed. A crackling sound again. “I repeat, now

stopping in Korsa. Thank you.”

A few things happened in quick succession then. First, Ibery wandered in and peeked into the

compartment to see if it was free. Zorian, being kind of bored with Kirielle’s antics, invited her in.

Ibery seemed a little taken aback by his friendliness, but seeing Kirielle put her at ease, and she did

claim a seat beside them after a moment of hesitation. Then Byrn, a guy he had met way back at the

beginning of his time looping experience, also wandered in and asked if a seat was free in their

compartment. Zorian happily invited him in, too.

Suddenly, the compartment had become a lot livelier than it used to be. Ibery was shy and quiet, and

had immediately chosen to bury her nose in a book when she came in, but Byrn was friendly and

talkative and immediately tried to strike up a conversation with them. Kirielle immediately started

peppering him with questions about magic and the academy.

“I’m Kirielle Kazinski,” Kirielle said, “and that’s my brother Zorian. Are you a student like Zorian? Can

you do magic? What year are you? Is it true that you have to fight a giant spider in order to get

admitted as a student? Zorian says that’s a requirement, but I think he’s lying…”

“Ha ha, umm… I don’t think I would have gotten in, if that were the case,” Byrn laughed. “I don’t think

I could win a fight against the other students, never mind a giant spider.”

“Lots of types of giant spiders,” Zorian noted. “There’s a whole bunch of them that you could easily

club to death with a mundane weapon, so long as you keep your cool and don’t panic.”

“Oh? You sound pretty knowledgeable about that. Did you ever fight one for real?” Byrn asked

curiously.

“Yes, though not as an admission test, of course,” Zorian said. “I told that to Kirielle just to mess with

her a little.”

“I knew it,” Kirielle pouted, folding her hands over her chest and giving him a grumpy look.

“Ah, so, I hate to shift the subject, but that last name…” Byrn tried.

“Yes, Daimen Kazinski is our brother,” Zorian said with a shrug. “We have very little contact with him,

though. He mostly does his own thing and rarely visits.”

The conversation continued for a while after that, meandering from topic to topic. Even Ibery joined

in after figuring out from Byrn’s question that they were Fortov’s siblings. She did not actually bring

up Fortov, however, which was probably for the best. Zorian would have been diplomatic, of course,

but Kirielle disliked their middle brother as much as he did and would likely not have anything nice to

say about that topic. In any case, the conversation eventually turned towards a particularly shocking

event that occurred in Cyoria recently. Namely, the fact that Zach’s place had gotten utterly trashed

during his fight with Red Robe, and that he himself had gone missing for several hours while people

frantically searched for him all over the city.

“What? Someone actually attacked the Noveda Mansion like that? I didn’t know that,” Ibery said,

surprised.

“Yes, it happened really recently. The attack happened very early in the morning, just a few hours

ago,” Byrn said, nodding self-indulgently. He was clearly pleased to have acquired this news so soon

after it occurred. Man, news sure does spread fast these days. “I hear the fighting was really fierce.

Some of the support columns were damaged, and several walls got breached. I heard repairs will

take weeks! It must have been a really powerful force that launched the attack – the newspapers

were saying only a fully equipped mage regiment could have done so much damage so quickly.”

“But that place is right there in one of the better parts of the city… and aren’t Noveda an old,

influential Noble House?” Ibery asked. “How could a force of that size come and go just like that?

Where were the guards during all this?”

“Well, someone was clearly fighting the attackers and fought them off in the end, so presumably the

guards were not useless,” Byrn shrugged. “Besides, I hear the Noveda are not the same force they

once were. My father says they’re a mere shadow of their former selves. It’s still crazy that

something like this can happen.”

“You know, Zach Noveda is one of my classmates,” Zorian said suddenly.

“Really?” Byrn said, perking up. “I don’t suppose you heard more about this, then?”

“I just know Zach is fine,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “He wasn’t present in the mansion when the

attack occurred. He was out drinking and dancing throughout the entire night.”

Or at least that was the excuse Zach had picked for himself as an explanation as to what had

happened. They modified the memory of the healer that had patched him up (after leaving him a

sizeable ‘anonymous tip’ for his services), so no one should be able to contradict his story. Zorian

did suggest to Zach that he should pick some other excuse, since saying he had spent the entire

night getting drunk and gods know what else was somewhat embarrassing, but Zach insisted this

was fine.

Sure enough, Ibery responded to Zorian’s explanation by wrinkling her nose in distaste, while Byrn

simply laughed awkwardly.

“I did hear rumors about the Noveda heir,” Ibery said. “They say he’s not exactly a model student, if

you know what I mean.”

“There is nothing wrong with his magic skills,” Zorian quickly said, feeling compelled to defend his

friend. “He’s just a little… reckless.”

“Are you friends with this Zach?” Kirielle asked curiously. “How come I don’t know anything about

this?”

“Why would I say something like this to a little tattletale like you?” Zorian asked rhetorically. “You’d

run off to tell Mother the moment my back was turned.”

“I would not!” she huffed, swinging her legs in an attempt to hit his knees. He shifted his legs out of

the way a few times and she eventually gave up on the idea.

By the time the train arrived in Cyoria, the whole group was so absorbed in their conversation that

they kept together and continued conversing even when it was time to disembark. When the train

began to approach Cyoria, the whole group left the compartment and went to stand by the exit…

along with so many others. Usually Zorian led Kirielle with him to the exit early enough to seize a

place right next to the exit, but he had lost track of time this time, and they ended up in the middle of

a literal throng. Somewhat tired from socializing and put off by the throng of people pushing and

shoving all around him, Zorian leaned on the nearby window and simply observed the people around

them.

It had been a while since he had been stuck in a crowd like this. With his great magical skills and

ability to simply teleport from place to place, he usually had no need to use normal transportation

methods to get to places. A confusing, erratic mess of emotions and mental signals washed against

his mind sense, but he was far too good at controlling his psychic powers these days to be bothered

by that. His mind was like a rock in the sea, battered by the winds and violent waves, but solid and

unmoving.

“Hey, you! You’re one of the upperclassmen, aren’t you?”

Zorian looked at the girl talking to him, curious as to what she wanted from him. She was part of the

group of first years next to him, and had completely ignored him up until now. Her whole group was

kind of amusing, talking excitedly amongst themselves about how they were going to start learning

magic, and become famous mages, and similar stuff. He kind of wished he could see their faces

when they realized the first year was all about theory and repetitive mana exercises.

“I am,” he confirmed. “So?”

“Can you show us any magic?” she asked eagerly.

Wait… this sounded kind of familiar…

“He can’t!” Kirielle, who had apparently been listening in on their conversation, piped in. “The train

has a magic field that stops people from doing magic.”

“It’s because some of the students would set fire to the seats or etch their names and crude

drawings into the walls of the train,” Zorian confirmed.

“Oh,” the girl said, clearly disappointed.

“I know,” Kirielle agreed with, sadly. “It sucks. Some jerk always has to ruin it for the rest of us.”

Yeah, this whole situation was really familiar to him for some reason.

Oh well, it probably wasn’t anything important.

- break -

Zorian became a little concerned about things after the group disembarked at Cyoria’s main train

station. This was because Bryn had a habit of following after them, and Zorian had plans that would

be rather inconvenienced by that. He was just debating whether it was justified to use mind magic to

nudge his thoughts in the ‘right’ direction, when Bryn regretfully informed them that he had to stay

behind at the station for a while. Apparently his parents were disturbed enough by the recent attack

on the Noveda Mansion that they had asked a friend of theirs that lived in the city to pick Bryn up

from the station and escort him to his dorm. Thus, Bryn would have to stay behind and wait for the

man to show up.

Zorian found it curious that Red Robe’s attack on Zach had such far-reaching consequences. Bryn

wasn’t even from Cyoria, yet the attack changed the way he went through the month so quickly and

radically. Zach and Zorian knew that Tesen and the city authorities would have a strong reaction to

the Noveda Mansion being suddenly attacked like that, but he didn’t expect the ordinary people to

care so much.

In any case, Zorian simply said goodbye to Bryn and Ibery and was on his merry way with Kirielle in

tow. He did exchange contact methods with Bryn and Ibery in case they wanted to get in touch later,

but he wasn’t sure if anything would come out of that. Neither of them had been particularly inclined

to seek him out when they had done similar things in the time loop. With the world lasting longer

than a month, though, perhaps that would change. Only time would tell.

Zorian didn’t take Kirielle immediately towards Imaya’s place, though. Instead, he took her to a

familiar bridge in one of the city parks. There, a small black-haired girl was crying her eyes out over

a bicycle that had fallen into the creek below.

Kirielle watched quietly from the sidelines as Zorian slowly calmed Nochka down and got her to

explain why she was crying. This done, he placed his hand over the bridge and telekinetically lifted

the bike out of the water. He also casually cleaned it up a little, ignoring the chorus of complaints

from his simulacrums that he was being ‘frivolous’ in his mana use. The jerks had been on the

lookout for something like this for a while now, most likely.

“It isn’t frivolous,” he told them telepathically. “What did you expect me to do, exactly?”

“You could have waded in through the muddy water on foot,” a simulacrum helpfully explained.

“It’s just getting a little wet, there’s no harm in that,” another one added.

“All it would take is a bit more time. Gods, why are you so impatient?” a third one scolded.

“All of you, shut up and mind your own business!” Zorian told them grumpily.

He had the worst simulacrums.

“There,” Zorian told Nochka. “Your bike is clean, intact, and out of the creek. You can stop crying

now, okay?”

“Okay,” she sniffed, rubbing her eyes. “Um. Thank you.”

“Well, if that’s that, I guess we should get going now,” Zorian said. “Though… I think it’s going to rain

soon. Do you have an umbrella?”

“N-No…” She said, shaking her head. “But, um, I’m going to be fine…”

“We should help her get home,” Kirielle suddenly said. She quickly got into Nochka’s personal space

and introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Kirielle! Kirielle Kazinski, and that’s my brother Zorian. What’s your

name?”

After some back and forth, Nochka agreed to have them accompany her home. The walk was a

short one, but Zorian paid close attention to everything around him along the way. He found no

evidence of cephalic rats or other invader agents along the way. Even the cephalic rat swarm he

usually encountered while traveling through this part of the city was not here this time – he had

chosen the path that led to Nochka on purpose, not because he was trying to avoid the rats. The

aranea were fighting a pretty intense war with the cephalic rats at the moment, so this turn of events

wasn’t particularly surprising. They were too busy to spy on people much, and could no longer move

freely through most of the city.

Still, while Rea and her family seemed free of invader schemes at the moment, he knew that

wouldn’t last forever. Assuming Red Robe did not find some kind of alternative method of unlocking

Panaxeth’s prison, shifter children like Nochka remained a critical component of primordial’s release

plans. Thus, evacuating them out of the city through means fair or foul was probably the most certain

way of sabotaging the ritual at Zach and Zorian’s disposal. Shifters were not that numerous and

there were only so many shifters available in the area.

Though, if he were going to be honest with himself, wanting to befriend Rea and her family wasn’t

purely because of pragmatism. Rea had no special influence over her fellow shifters and would be of

limited help if he wanted to talk them into going along with the evacuation. He just had a soft spot for

the little girl that had befriended his little sister and the sight of her stripped naked and waiting to be

drained of all blood for some messed up blood ritual was vividly burned into his mind. He had

promised to himself that he would make sure Nochka survived the month out there in the real world,

and he still meant that. He meant to save all the shifter children, of course, but making sure Nochka

was safe had a personal dimension for him.

Since he had already thrown away his good sense and taken Kirielle to the death trap that was

Cyoria, he may as well introduce her to her former and future friend. At least if they started hanging

around each other, he could more easily protect the both of them without spreading himself thin.

The actual conversation with Rea was pretty mundane. Nochka’s mother was pretty friendly, and

Zorian did not confront her with any heavy topics. They simply talked about who he and Kirielle

were, how they had met Nochka, and where they were staying. Kirielle almost ratted out Nochka on

dropping her bike in the stream, which caused the little cat shifter to panic and hurriedly shut her

up… by manifesting her claws and clamping down on Kirielle’s arm. This caused Rea to freak out

because Nochka ‘almost’ ruined their secret and hurt a guest, but the situation was thankfully

resolved in the end, and Zorian pretended not to have noticed anything strange about the incident.

Interestingly, Rea also brought up the news of Zach’s place being attacked, just like Bryn did. She

didn’t have any new information for Zorian, but it did emphasize how notable the attack was for

people. Zorian wondered if Red Robe even realized how eye-catching the whole thing would end up

being.

“You are classmates with the Noveda heir?” Rea asked. “My, I seem to have met an important

person today.”

“Not… really?” Zorian said dubiously.

“Come now, Mister Kazinski. You have a famous brother, you attend a prestigious magical academy,

and one of your classmates is a scion of a Noble House,” Rea pointed out.

“Two, actually,” said Zorian. There was also Tinami. “I don’t think any of that makes me important.”

Rea hummed loudly at him, clearly not agreeing.

“Have it your way,” she shrugged. She rose from her seat and took a look at the weather outside.

Things didn’t look good of course. The rain was pouring in thick sheets while the wind was blowing

madly in all directions, and Zorian knew from the time loop that the storm wouldn’t be ending any

time soon.

This was the main reason Zorian was less impatient about leaving Rea’s place this time around. He

couldn’t just teleport to Imaya’s place or create a rain shield around himself and Kirielle. No, he

would have to use an umbrella like a normal person, and they would end up wet and miserable by

the time they actually reached their destination. He was in no hurry to experience that.

“What horrid weather,” Rea said, frowning. “I think you’re going to have to remain here over the

night.”

“We can’t impose on you like that,” Zorian said hurriedly, shaking his head. “We’ll just slowly make

our way through the storm. A little rain won’t kill us.”

“You can’t be serious,” Rea said, giving him an annoyed look. “I know teenage boys can be a little

reckless, and I would not have said anything if it was just you being stupid… but you’re taking your

little sister along and you have to take this into account. Are you seriously thinking of taking her out

there into that with just an umbrella?”

Zorian stared at Rea for a few seconds before looking at Kirielle, who was sitting on the floor with

Nochka. They were both whispering something to each other and pretending they weren’t listening in

on their conversation.

“Kirielle,” Zorian asked her slowly. “What do you think about going?”

“Umm…” she fumbled, rubbing her hands awkwardly. “It’s raining pretty hard.”

Zorian sighed, taking off his glasses and massaging the bridge of his nose. After a few seconds he

gave Rea an embarrassed look. He was just about to speak up but she put a hand on his shoulder

to stop him and simply nodded her head knowingly.

“I’ll go get some blankets,” she said, before wandering off to do just that.

In the corner of his eye, he could see Nochka and Kirielle excitedly whisper to each other. They, at

least, seemed pleased with this outcome.

After a few seconds, Zorian clacked his tongue and decided to just roll with the situation. It was

embarrassing, but there was no real harm in it.

He looked through the window, silently observing the storm for a while. After a while, Rea wandered

in and placed a steaming cup of tea on the window sill beside him. Zorian gave her a curious look.

“A cup of tea is necessary for proper rain watching,” Rea explained to him.

“Ah. Thank you,” Zorian said quietly. “Sorry for the imposition. I could tell it was going to rain, but–”

“Do I look that mean and selfish to you?” Rea asked, raising her eyebrow at him. “Hospitality had

always been important to my people.”

“Your people?” Zorian asked her curiously, feigning ignorance.

“Your acting skills are decent, but I know you saw the claws on Nochka’s fingers. You probably know

what we are,” Rea said, sipping slowly from her own cup of tea while standing beside him.

“Yeah,” Zorian admitted with a shrug. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“Good,” Rea said simply. She then dropped the subject and no longer pursued the matter. “I don’t

know if this is really the issue, or if there is something deeper going on, but it’s pointless to get angry

or frustrated at a storm. It’s a force of nature; there is no fighting that. You just take shelter and wait

until it ends.”

“Right,” said Zorian quietly, taking a sip of the tea Rea had made for him.

Sadly, some storms couldn’t be dodged that easily.

- break -

While Zorian had been escorting Kirielle, his simulacrums had been very busy. They, along with

Zach’s simulacrums, constantly attacked known cult leaders and invader bases, raiding them for

funds and trying to decapitate their organizations. Sadly, this hadn’t been nearly as effective as they

had hoped. Red Robe had clearly been very busy and most of their targets had been forewarned

they were coming. Warding schemes were changed, the guards were on alert, and some people

were just outright evacuated to safety. They had managed to acquire a lot of money and resources,

since many of the secret caches had been protected mainly by their secrecy, and it wasn’t easy to

strip a base of everything that was worth money in a hurry, but Zorian doubted they had managed to

deal any kind of decisive strike to their enemies.

Below the city, the fighting was also intense. It was mostly the aranea fighting the cephalic rats, but

Zorian’s simulacrum sometimes helped the aranean side… and since Zorian’s uncontested

presence would have meant a decisive victory for the aranea, Red Robe’s simulacrum was always

there to stop the cephalic rats from getting wiped out. Neither Zorian nor Red Robe were fighting

seriously, wary of showing the enemy too much and wasting their mana reserves, but the fact

Zorian’s simulacrum had a much more resilient golem body meant that he was slowly getting an

upper hand in these skirmishes. It remained to be seen what Red Robe would do in response to

that. Zorian doubted he would let the cephalic rats just die, since they were a critical asset for the

invasion forces.

The simulacrums were also negotiating with various aranean webs in the region, trying to bring in

additional support for the fight. Of particular importance were the negotiations with the Silent

Doorway Adepts, since they needed their help to open a connection to Koth. Zorian did not doubt for

a second the negotiations were going to succeed; they had lots of things they could tempt the Silent

Doorway Adepts with. The Bakora gate addresses in particular were bound to have irresistible allure

for the web. However, the issue was that these negotiations would still end up taking time, and they

had to keep the web protected from enemy machinations while they were in progress. Silverlake

knew exactly how important this was to them, so an attack at the Silent Doorway Adepts was

worryingly plausible.

Some things were also moved forward a little. Kael and his daughter had been contacted by Zach’s

simulacrum disguised as a school official, who teleported them directly to Imaya’s place. This was

mostly because Zach and Zorian were worried that Silverlake, whose movements were still a

mystery to them, was going to target them. Kael and his daughter were too easy of a target to be left

alone for long. Thankfully, Kael did not suspect a thing and even praised the academy for their

thoughtfulness. Zorian intended to evacuate Kael to Koth once he opened the gate link there, but for

now he was safest at Imaya’s house, since that way he would be living under the same roof as

Zorian and Kirielle.

Meanwhile, the simulacrum that got Zorian in the whole trouble with Kirielle got a task to get his

parents away from the house as soon as possible. Thus, less than an hour after Zorian and Kirielle

had boarded the train to Cyoria, the simulacrum rounded up Mother and Father and teleported them

to the port city of Luja. Their memory was modified to make them believe this was perfectly normal.

It would create some discrepancies in dates; that could be a problem later. For now, though, Zorian

was just glad they would soon be out in the open ocean and out of danger. He’d deal with potential

consequences of his decision later.

The simulacrum in his room that was focusing on stabilizing his mana reserves was also evacuated

out of the house, leaving it completely empty. Even if Red Robe decided to visit the place now, the

most he could do was burn it down in frustration.

Which would still be devastating for Mother and Father, but Zorian was quite sure they wouldn’t want

to die to protect it.

Overall, things had been going… decently. There was still no sign of Silverlake, and Red Robe was

passively responding to their moves while focusing most of his energies into something they couldn’t

see.

It made no sense to Zorian. The way he saw it, he and Zach had an absolute advantage in this

conflict. Even if everything else failed, they could always inform the Eldemarian government about

the invasion and it would be instant loss for Red Robe and Silverlake. Any chance of successfully

invading the city or freeing Panaxeth would be gone. No matter how personally powerful they were

or what clever plans they had, they could never take on the central government head-on and win.

Thus, Red Robe and Silverlake should have taken a far more aggressive stance against them by

now.

But there was nothing Zorian could do about that. All he and Zach could do was wait. Hopefully, by

the time they recovered their full strength, they would uncover what their enemies were planning.

Chapter 094

Ghosts

The next morning, Zorian and Kirielle bid Rea and her family goodbye and went to Imaya’s place. Once

there, they found out that Imaya had only been slightly worried for them – she had guessed from the

severity of the last night’s storm that they had taken shelter somewhere overnight.

He also officially met Kael and his daughter. The morlock boy was a bit more leery about him than

Zorian remembered, but he supposed that was to be expected. He usually greeted Kael at Cyoria’s train

station and charmed him with practiced gestures and conversation right from the start… none of which

had happened this time. Since the circumstances of their meeting differed, so did Kael’s reaction to him.

It was a minor matter, really. Zorian was confident that the morlock boy would warm up to him

eventually. If anything, the fact Kael was currently so distant may very well be a good thing. Much like

Zorian’s interaction with Ilsa earlier in the resta-

He froze suddenly, fiercely knocking his head with his fist a couple of times. No. Not ‘restart’! There was

no time loop anymore. It was the real thing. He had to get this into his head as soon as possible…

His strange actions prompted strange looks from Imaya, who asked him if he was alright.

Once Kirielle had settled in and he cleared up some things with Imaya, Zorian left a simulacrum to guard

the place and left to find Zach. He eventually found him sitting on the edge of the academy fountain, idly

running his hand through the water while lost in thought.

“It’s weird,” Zach told him when he approached. “The fountain hadn’t worked for years, and it was only

recently that it got fixed and repainted… but to me, it looks perfectly normal as it is right now. In fact, I

don’t think I actually remember what the fountain looked like before this month.”

“Makes sense,” Zorian shrugged. “It’s been decades since you’ve last seen it.”

Even Zorian struggled to remember details like that, and his stay in the time loop had been far shorter

than Zach’s. He had the ability to flawlessly preserve important memories inside his memory packets, of

course, but that only worked for select things he consciously deemed important. Most of his memories

went through the exact same process as any other person’s.

Zach didn’t say anything to that. Instead he simply got up from his sitting spot and then motioned for

Zorian to follow him.

“I’m a bit hungry,” Zach said. “Let’s go to the cafeteria and see what they have to offer. It’s been so long

since I’ve been there I’ve already forgotten what the food there tastes like.”

“So did I,” Zorian admitted. “Still, we stopped going there for a reason. The cafeteria food is nothing

special, I assure you of that. What’s this all about, really?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something that has been on my mind lately,” Zach said with a shrug. “Say, did you

ever figure out what you would do after this month?”

Zorian hesitated for a few seconds.

“There are so many uncertainties surrounding this month that it almost seems foolish to have any long-

term plans until it’s over,” he said cautiously. “Even if we both survive and Cyoria isn’t a ruined wreck by

the end of it, the invasion may very well leave us on the run or trigger another round of Splinter Wars.

Ignoring that, though, I think I’ll just gather some funds…”

Zach gave him a knowing look.

“Well, okay, a lot of funds,” Zorian admitted. “And then I’ll open a research facility to study the nature of

mana. Maybe I’ll be able to figure out how to duplicate that mana-increasing stabilization frame that you

and Quatach-Ichl have attached to your soul. Or maybe I’ll discover how to store mana in outside

containers, assimilate mana more quickly and efficiently, or some other revolutionary improvement.

That had kind of been my dream when I was younger – to invent something that would completely

revolutionize the way magic is done. I eventually discarded that as a childish fantasy that I had no power

to realize… but maybe it’s not so impossible anymore.”

“Still very difficult,” Zach noted. “If a talented mage with plenty of money was enough to revolutionize

magic, it would happen way more often than it does.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zorian said. “It’s fine if I fail. I have no interest in hoarding money or in political

maneuvering, so what else would I do with my time and money?”

“Never say never,” said Zach with a grin. “Once you get married, you may find your wife is not nearly as

divorced from material concerns as you are.”

“You’re not even married yourself, so how would you know anything about that?” Zorian huffed. “Don’t

talk like an old man.”

“But I am an old man,” Zach protested. “At least from a certain perspective. Anyway, I hope you realize

that this sort of thing you’re describing is something the time loop would have been absolutely perfect

for, right?”

“Yes, but I didn’t have time to focus on such peripheral, highly theoretical projects back in the time loop.

Kind of funny, but true. Life is amusing like that sometimes,” Zorian shrugged. He paused for a moment,

thinking about something. “Of course, before I can throw myself into big projects like that, I first need to

pay back all the people that helped me inside the time loop. Doing that without drawing any attention

and revealing my identity is bound to be a… tricky undertaking.”

“Can you even do that at this point?” Zach asked. “We lost most of the notebooks and research notes

when the physical exit strategy failed.”

“I saved the most crucial work in my head, and the rest can be reconstructed with some effort,” Zorian

said. “It may take years but I’m sure I can do it.”

He was deliberately being a little more optimistic about things than he really felt. So many things had

been lost at the end of the time loop… it pained Zorian to even think of it. Zorian had used memory

packets to preserve their most important information, designs, and notebooks before the group had

made their exit attempt… just in case… but this was still just a small part of the whole. It couldn’t

substitute for the vast body of knowledge and invention that the group had managed to gather in the

end.

Rebuilding that massive library and then handing down portions of it to various people without causing

a massive stir that led straight back to him would be a difficult problem.

“Does that mean you’ve already given Kael his notes?” Zach asked curiously.

“No, not yet,” said Zorian, shaking his head. He actually had fairly complete version of Kael’s notes. He

prioritized preserving his research, mostly due to them being old friends, so he didn’t have to

reconstruct much in that regard. “The situation is very weird right now. I don’t want to involve him in

this mess until I have to, and I can’t just hand him those research notes and leave him to his own

devices.”

“Do you even want to tell him about the time loop?” Zach asked.

“Ideally, I’d like to keep everyone except Xvim, Alanic, and the Cyorian web in the dark about the time

loop,” Zorian said. “I’m not sure how possible that is, though. We are already planning to evacuate

everyone we know to Koth at some point. We’re going to need an explanation of some sort for that. At

the very least, informing Daimen about things may be necessary to get his cooperation.”

“Daimen would also be useful for his magical prowess and possibly his connections,” Zach pointed out.

“Speaking of Koth, how are the negotiations with the Silent Doorway Adepts going?”

“Reasonably well,” Zorian said. “We haven’t reached an agreement, but that’s normal. I don’t think we

need to tell them anything about time travel. Gate keys for another continent are tempting enough on

their own. We should have a way to Koth in a few days.”

“Good. I’ll feel a lot better with Princess by my side,” Zach said. “With her support, not even Quatach-Ichl

can force us to withdraw. I’d put my hand in the fire that Red Robe is trying to broker some kind of

alliance with Quatach-Ichl as quickly as he can.”

“Probably,” Zorian agreed.

“I really don’t like this,” Zach said. “You at least are in constant contact with your simulacrums, but I

don’t have that luxury. I have no idea what’s happening out there until my simulacrums deign to send

me a report, so all I can do is wait. I feel useless and stupid.”

“The simulacrums are doing fine,” Zorian assured him. “I’m concerned that we can’t find any solid clues

as to what Red Robe is really doing, but us being active along with our simulacrums would not have

helped with that anyway.”

“You may be right, but I’m sick of waiting,” Zach told him. “It just isn’t my style, you know? Once we get

our hands on the imperial orb and have Princess on our side we’ll be able to really go on the offensive. It

doesn’t matter what Red Robe is planning then – we’ll just come straight at him and crush him in battle.

If we demolish the Ibasan base beneath Cyoria and shut down the gate they use to transport their

troops, the invasion is over. We’ll see if he’ll still hide behind simulacrums when that happens.”

“Hey! Zorian! Hey! Over here!”

They had barely stepped foot inside the cafeteria when a familiar voice started calling for him. It was

Benisek – the chubby, cheerful, girl-obsessed boy that Zorian used to regularly interact with. Sadly, the

time loop had not been kind to their friendship. Benisek could be really annoying and shallow, and the

time loop had only made that worse. Eventually, Zorian stopped interacting with him at all.

He kind of felt bad about that. Benisek had his faults, but so did his old self. He couldn’t really ignore the

boy’s invitation without looking like a colossal jerk, so he reluctantly walked over. Zach followed after

him, inviting himself along.

“Hello, Ben,” Zorian said, as he fetched a nearby chair and sat down next to him. Zach gave Ben a friendly

wave and a smile before copying his action. “You sound happy. Eager to start a new school year?”

“You bet!” Benisek said, grinning wildly. “We’re upperclassmen now! Our dating prospects have entered

a whole new level!”

“Hell yeah!” Zach agreed, fist pumping in the air. “For girls!”

“For girls!” Benisek agreed, returning the fist pump with one of his own.

“For gods’ sake, you two… we’re in a public setting,” Zorian complained, trying to ignore the way people

around them were staring at them.

“So. You two are hanging out together, now?” Benisek asked curiously. “When did that happen?”

“In the last couple of days,” Zorian told him. “Don’t ask. It’s a long story involving a series of

misunderstandings, me getting punched in the face at the train station, and Zach getting attacked by my

little sister in retaliation.”

“That sounds super interesting, though,” he protested. “You can’t tell me something like that and then

just leave me hanging, man.”

He suddenly frowned a little, giving Zorian a weird look.

“Wait… are you saying you brought your annoying little sister along to Cyoria?” he asked.

“Yup,” Zorian confirmed with a decisive nod.

“Ouch,” Benisek said with an exaggerated wince. “My condolences. See, I told you that being so serious

and responsible would eventually bite you in the ass… my family would never even think of letting me

take care of my younger sisters! You should be more like me, Zorian!”

“The mere idea is horrifying,” Zorian told him bluntly.

“Bah, you don’t know what’s good for you,” Benisek said. He gave Zach a speculative look. “Though, if

you keep hanging out with our dear friend Zach, that may change after a while. I hear your recent life has

been somewhat… exciting.”

“Oh yeah, downright explosive,” agreed Zach.

“So that attack I was hearing about…?” Benisek asked.

“It’s all true, but I was out drinking and dancing that night so it ended up missing me,” Zach said with a

careless shrug.

“Ha ha, now that’s the proper way to evade death!” Benisek said, leaning forward to punch Zach in the

shoulder. Zach blocked it, which Benisek took in stride. He leaned back in his chair, his expression

becoming more solemn all of a sudden. “But man, I got to say, this is one messed up week. First the

attack on Noveda Mansion, and now that thing with the villages in Holakor… what is the world coming

to? I really, really hope this isn’t a prelude to war, you know? It’s kind of selfish, but I want my academy

days to be peaceful and fun.”

Zach and Zorian shared a confused look with each other.

“What do you mean ‘villages in Holakor’?” Zorian asked him. “We don’t know anything about that.”

“Ah? No?” Benisek said, surprised. “You two need to pay more attention to recent events, then. I know

Eldemarian newspapers haven’t reported much on it, but you two should keep an eye on continental

news. One of you is the heir of a Noble House and the other… well, I know Zorian doesn’t like hearing

about his brother, but–”

“Just tell us already,” Zorian told his friend with a heavy sigh.

“Fine, but you have to tell me that long story you teased me with earlier,” Benisek blackmailed.

“Deal,” Zorian immediately agreed. He would make something up later.

“Alright,” Benisek grinned. “I’ll hold you to that. Anyway, word is going around that a number of villages

in Holakor – that’s the big neighboring country to the west of Eldemar, you know – have been hit by

some sort of attack recently. A weirdly brutal attack. Rumors are saying it was a total bloodbath,

with hundreds of people killed.”

Zorian’s mood immediately plummeted.

He supposed they finally got a clue as to what Red Robe had been doing all this time.

- break -

Later that day, Zorian returned to Imaya’s place, his thoughts still on what Benisek had told them. He

and Zach had immediately dispatched a pair of simulacrums to Holakor to check up on this situation, but

it would take a while for them to reach the villages in question and investigate things. In the meantime,

they could only speculate what Red Robe had been doing there and for what purpose.

He didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to his musings, though, because he was soon interrupted by

Taiven, who sought him out for recruitment.

Zorian didn’t want to tell her about the time loop. Like Kael and a lot of other people that once made up

their group of temporary loopers, she couldn’t actually help them in any way and telling her about the

invasion would just expose her to danger. Well, more danger than she was already in.

Sometimes he wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to just tell everyone about the time loop and point the

central government at Red Robe and the invaders right from the very start. However, when they had

discussed that scenario back in the time loop, even the temporary loopers agreed this was a very

unhappy solution to the problem. The central government was notoriously corrupt and power-hungry,

and the current king favored a highly aggressive stance towards any internal threats. Once Eldemar’s

forces were done dealing with Red Robe and the Ibasans, they were almost certainly going to turn on

them.

And anyone who knew about the time loop and the invasion would likely suffer along with them.

Calling in the military was pretty much a guaranteed win… for Cyoria and its citizens. However, they,

and people close to them, might end up paying the price for this good deed. This was not a choice they

wanted to make. They were not selfless angels, after all. Thus, it was decided to only make the report

once they were reasonably sure it couldn’t be tracked down to them. That would take a while to set up,

but it wouldn’t take the entire month to do so. That was the main reason why Zorian was fine with Red

Robe’s stalling for time. Unless Red Robe blindsided them with something, Zach and Zorian were

guaranteed to win.

Of course, if Red Robe’s schemes did blindside them, they would rather unmask themselves than allow

the city to be destroyed and watch as an ancient godlike monster is released into the world. That was

why it was important to keep most of the former temporary loopers in the dark for now. If the army

suddenly stormed into the city and started asking questions, the less they knew about what was going

on, the better.

Still, he couldn’t just refuse Taiven’s offer and send her off into the tunnels beneath the city to die. Thus,

he let her in on some of his secrets.

“What?” Taiven complained. “Why are you staring at me like that? Is there something on my face?”

She ran her hand over her face to check things and even glanced behind her to check if there was

someone standing over her shoulder. Zorian didn’t know whether she was faking it in order to make fun

of him or if she honestly believed these were legitimate possibilities… but he supposed he had been

staring at her for a little too long.

“Taiven, this job of yours is a total setup,” he eventually told her. “You should stay away from this one.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. “It’s just a simple find and retrieve in

the tunnels below the city. Fight some giant spiders, find the lost thingy, get out.”

“The giant spiders are aranea,” Zorian told her. “They’re giant, intelligent, telepathic spiders. Unless you

know what you’re doing and come prepared, they can blast you into unconsciousness before you can

blink.”

Taiven took a step back at the description, her eyes widening at the description.

“Shit,” she swore. “Roach, how do you–”

“And that man isn’t some innocent wanderer that lost his expensive trinket down there,” Zorian

continued. “He had been spying on the aranea and got caught in the act. That ward breaker device is

currently safely stored in the aranea treasury, not carelessly dropped in some dusty tunnel and free for

the taking.”

“Roach, how do you know this!?” Taiven asked, a little more forcefully this time.

“Huh. I’m surprised you didn’t just accuse me of lying,” he told her slowly.

“This is too serious,” she said, frowning. “I don’t think you’d joke around with something like that. And

you’re not really the joking type, either. Now tell.”

“Well, I know about this because I’m friendly with the aranea,” Zorian told her. “They’re teaching me

how to control my telepathic powers, after all.”

“Your… telepathic powers?” she repeated slowly. “As in… mind reading?”

[Among other things, yes,] he sent her telepathically.

She flinched back and gave him a frightened look afterward. For a moment Zorian thought she would

bolt out of his room right then and there but instead she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and forcibly

calmed herself down.

“Damn, Roach,” she said, massaging her forehead. “You really know how to drop a secret on someone.”

“I had to make sure you take this seriously,” Zorian said.

“Well, you succeeded,” she responded unhappily. She gave him a suspicious look. “You didn’t read my

mind without permission, did you? How long has this been going on, anyway?”

“I didn’t,” Zorian assured her. “I only found out about my innate mental powers recently.”

“Well, good,” Taiven said. “Though I’m not too happy you’re keeping secrets like that. Especially

something that sounds so… shady. I never knew there was a colony of sapient spiders living beneath the

city. They’re not here legally, are they? And you’re just hanging around them and learning mind magic

from them like it’s nothing? What else are you hiding from me?”

“You’re just mad I didn’t invite you along for this ‘shady’ adventure,” Zorian said, deflecting her worries.

“Yes, dammit!” she said, swinging her fist at his shoulder.

He flawlessly deflected her half-hearted punch to the side, causing her to stop and blink at him in

surprise. His move wasn’t really all that amazing, but he suddenly realized he never used to do that sort

of thing before the time loop. Oops.

“You know I’m right, though,” she said, ignoring the incident in favor of crossing her arms in front of her

chest and staring down at him. “It’s crazy dangerous what you’re doing, and you should have at least

taken a bodyguard when going down there.”

“You?” Zorian ‘guessed’.

“Who else do you know that is an amazing battlemage?” she ask asked rhetorically, straightening her

pose pridefully.

“Well, I’ve been hanging out with Zach Noveda lately, and he’s pretty good at combat magic,” Zorian told

her.

“The Noveda heir? Isn’t he one of your classmates?” Taiven asked dubiously.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed.

“A third year student being able to compare with me? Please,” Taiven scoffed. “You’re looking down way

too much on me, Zorian. Looks like I’ll have to challenge you to a proper fight soon, just to broaden your

horizons and let you get some perspective on things.”

Zorian couldn’t help it. He stopped himself from laughing out loud at her, but there was a wide smile

stuck on his face that just wouldn’t go away.

“What?” she demanded. “What the hell is so amusing about what I said? You want to fight right now!?”

He couldn’t help it and simply burst into laughter at her.

Later on, Zorian reflected that Imaya was probably starting to think of him as some major weirdo. First it

was that incident of him punching himself in the head earlier, and now there was a girl chasing him

around the house and demanding that he ‘takes it like a man’ and whatnot.

Zorian wasn’t sure how his friendship with Taiven was going to fare in the future, considering that he

could not possibly hide the full extent of his skills forever… but at least her current visit had brightened

his day somewhat.

- break -

Red Robe had chosen his targets well. Although situated on the border of Eldemar and relatively close to

Cyoria, Holakor was pretty difficult to access. It had rather unfriendly relations with Eldemar – not an

unusual situation in regards to states bordering their country – and it was a mountainous country with

poor transport infrastructure and plenty of isolated mountain villages. Reaching their destination was

quite mana expensive, requiring lots of teleportation and other magic, and orienting themselves was a

chore. The whole region was swarming with Holakorian soldiers searching for the culprits and trying to

control the flow of news and people in and out of the place. Additionally, Holakor’s cartographers had

apparently not done a very good job, because some of the villages hit by the attacks weren’t even

marked in publically available maps and records.

Still, Zach and Zorian were resourceful people, and their simulacrums inherited their skills. Thus, it took

them less than two days to reach the villages Benisek had told them about and investigate the situation.

The results of the investigation were grim. Benisek had said the worst of the rumors mentioned

hundreds of casualties… but it only took one glance at the first village they visited to realize this estimate

was, if anything, severely understated. The village was the scene of a total bloodbath – of the 300 or so

inhabitants, most of them had been killed. Only a young couple that sneaked away from the village

during the night and an old hunter that decided to sleep over in the wilderness had survived the

slaughter. The attackers hadn’t even bothered to loot the place – the objective appeared to have been

simple, indiscriminate killing.

The other villages they visited were pretty much the same. A sudden, overwhelming attack that aimed to

kill as many as possible. Accounts of the attackers were hard to come by, since most people who got

caught up in it died, but it was clear the attacker was a sizeable armed group. A group that contained

war trolls, various monsters, and scores of undead. A group that seemed capable of teleporting

themselves all over the place, because they had hit over ten villages in the span of a single night, before

seemingly disappearing into thin air.

Adding everything together, Zach and Zorian estimated the death toll reached easily into thousands.

Holakorian authorities had walled off the area from the rest of the country, fearing mass panic and

unrest if the true scope of the slaughter became known, which was why the reaction to the attack was

rather muted at the moment. Still, those kinds of measures were just stalling for time. Zorian would be

surprised if they could keep it a secret for more than a week.

At first, neither Zach nor Zorian could understand this move. What was Red Robe trying to accomplish

by killing Holakorian villagers like that? Was this some sort of large-scale sacrifice? Zorian wouldn’t call

himself an expert on blood magic, but he didn’t think so. The killing was too quick and disorganized, and

the villages hit by the attacks weren’t arranged into discernible pattern.

In the end they went to Alanic for help. Alanic was one of the people they had decided to inform about

the existence of the time loop and the invasion no matter what, since he was highly competent and

already in huge danger from the invaders no matter what. Thus far he still wasn’t convinced they were

telling the truth about the whole time travel business, but the information they had brought him was

pretty convincing on its own. After all, the little notebook that Zorian duplicated from his memory

packets was written by Alanic himself, and listed all sorts of criminal groups and hideouts they had

found over the restarts. Even if Alanic thought they were lying or delusional about being time travelers,

he was still holding a book written in his own handwriting, mentioning things only he should know

about and listing a variety of things whose truthfulness was easy to check.

Alanic took one look at the information they had compiled about the attack on Holakorian villages and

dismissed the idea it was some kind of massive demon summoning or some other piece of blood magic.

“Blood magic fueled summonings are disturbingly easy, but not this easy,” Alanic said, shaking his head.

“The victims would have to be herded into a central location. Their life force would have to be carefully

mixed and funneled into a massive spell formula circle. The preparations would not be small and would

be easily noticed and stopped. Holakor’s authorities would not miss such a thing, and you would have

seen evidence of it even if they had.”

“Then what is this about?” asked Zach, sounding frustrated. “Why are they killing all these people? It’s

not simply bloodthirstiness, I’m sure of that. This was clearly done with the full cooperation of Quatach-

Ichl and his forces. There is no way he would have agreed to this unless there was some kind of clear

benefit to this.”

Alanic looked at the papers in silence, shuffling them around while frowning deeply. This went on for a

full minute, with Zach and Zorian quietly waiting to hear what he had to say.

“I almost want to say this is a soul-gathering operation,” Alanic eventually told them. “Except… gathering

souls is not such a simple business, either. In order to gather the souls of thousands of people, the

attackers would need thousands of soul containers. Even if they could afford to build that many, the

sheer logistics of shuffling those soul containers around to the right place and the right time and casting

the necessary spells to capture the soul before it moved on to the afterlife–”

Zach and Zorian’s faces became uglier the longer Alanic continued to speak.

“Shit,” Zach swore.

“What?” Alanic said, frowning. He was frowning a lot at the moment, clearly upset by the information the

two of them just brought him.

“They don’t have to go through all that trouble because they have Sudomir’s Well of Souls,” Zorian

explained to him.

“Well of Souls?” Alanic slowly repeated. He glanced at the little book on the side of the table. “Is that

inside the notebook you gave me?”

“It is,” Zorian confirmed. “You must not have reached that part.”

Alanic quickly flipped through it until he reached the relevant part. Zach and Zorian waited for him to

finish, discussing things quietly amongst themselves.

“Well,” Alanic eventually said, snapping the book in his hands shut. “Not only am I now certain this

was indeed a soul gathering operation… I think I even know what they need all those souls for.”

“Yes. And so do we,” Zach told him grimly. “It’s pretty obvious at this point.”

“Sudomir is making his wraith bombs in advance,” Zorian finished for them.

- break -

Despite recent developments, Zach and Zorian decided to attend the first day of classes at the academy.

There were three reasons for that. The first one was that Zach and Zorian wanted to scout out Iasku

Mansion to see what they were dealing with before they commited themselves to anything substantial.

The second one was that they should get access to Koth soon, which will greatly expand their

capabilities and was well worth waiting for.

And the third one was that showing up to class today was probably their last chance to do such a thing

for the rest of the month. After today, it was unlikely they would have time to mess around with

schoolwork and attending classes. They might as well take this opportunity to reunite with their

classmates for a moment, finish recovering, and mentally prepare themselves for the trials ahead.

“You’re late.”

Zorian looked at Akoja, dutifully standing in front of the door with a clipboard in her hands and taking

note of incoming students. She stared at him coolly, tapping her foot impatiently against the ground.

He simply smiled at her in response, causing her to suddenly lose her cool and look away uncomfortably.

“Sorry,” Zorian told her. “Things are a little hectic these days, at least for me.”

“Well… just don’t let it happen in the future, okay?” she told him seriously, quickly recovering her

confidence.

“Sadly, I don’t think that’s possible,” Zorian shook his head. “I’m probably going to be absent from

classes a lot in the near future.”

“It’s not a good idea to miss the start of the school year like that,” she told him with a small frown.

“I disagree. The start of the school year is the best time to miss,” Zorian told her. “It’s all just repetition of

things we’ve already learned in previous years and very easy study material. I’ll make up for it in a flash,

you’ll see.”

“Just get inside already,” she told him with a long suffering sigh.

Zorian gave her a thumbs up and did as he was told, humming happily as he entered the classroom and

picked a seat for himself. Zach was already inside, Akoja not having paid too much attention to him.

Zorian greeted a few of the classmates he remembered being slightly more friendly with before the time

loop, turning some heads due to how uncharacteristically happy he seemed, before going towards the

front of the classroom.

He picked a familiar spot next to Briam and his fire drake, with Zach right behind him.

Just like he expected, the small fire drake in Briam’s lap immediately started hissing at him when he

approached. Briam quickly enclosed the orange-red lizard with both hands and started whispering

soothingly at his familiar. The drake calmed down a little but still kept both of his eyes on Zorian, alert

and nervous.

Zorian ignored the spectacle, simply plopping down on his seat and calmly watching the scene. He still

didn’t understand what exactly the fire drake found so upsetting about him in particular. He had once

even peered into the fire drake’s mind to find the answer, but that didn’t help. The fire drake was not

actually a sapient being. He was a creature of instinct, and something deep inside of him told him that

Zorian was uniquely dangerous out of all people gathered in the classroom. The fire drake did not

understand why, but it trusted its instincts.

Did the drake sense Zorian’s mental powers, despite not being psychic himself? Did Zorian have some

ability he had no idea about? It was a mystery. From what Briam had told him, he wasn’t unique in this

regard. Fire drakes could be very strange, temperamental creatures, and he wasn’t the first person that

his familiar had picked out for some reason. Eventually, the influence of the mage they were bonded

with tended to temper these kinds of aggressive urges, and mature fire drake familiars were apparently

far more placid and reliable in dealing with strangers.

“Sorry about that,” Briam said. “He’s still a little uneasy around strangers.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Zorian said, waving the apology away. “Congratulations on getting your own

familiar, I guess. Must be a milestone for you.”

“Yeah,” Briam said happily, patting the drake like some kind of scaly cat. The drake reacted to that sort of

like a cat, too. “It’s great.”

He spent some time talking to Briam and waiting for the class to start. Though it was premature to

worry about that now, he couldn’t help but wonder how to deal with school life in the future. His

classmates were nice and all… some of them he’d be happy to befriend if possible… but he was so much

more capable than them magic-wise that it wasn’t even funny. Plus, the classes themselves are bound to

be mind-numbingly boring. Could he really pretend to be just a normal student for two years straight?

Was it actually possible for someone like him – a guy with archmage-level skills and a decade of

additional memories and experience under his belt – to befriend one of these people?

Perhaps time loop Taiven was right and his attempt to connect to his former friends and classmates was

ultimately kind of hollow and patronizing…

Thankfully, his somewhat depressing thoughts were soon interrupted by Ilsa’s arrival to class. She did

her practiced speech at the beginning of the class and then started the lesson. Zorian was already

preparing himself for a boring but relaxing class the likes of which he had heard dozens of times inside

the time loop when the classroom door suddenly burst open, and a teenage boy his own age swaggered

inside.

He was tall, with messy blond hair and rumpled clothes that looked like they had seen better days. The

door had been opened so forcefully that Zorian suspected the boy had kicked it open with his foot

instead of using the handle. It rebounded against the wall with a loud bang and promptly closed itself

behind him.

As he marched forward towards the front of the class, the boy swept the whole class with his gaze. For a

moment, Zorian met his eyes and found himself staring at vividly orange eyes, their slitted pupils

burning with barely contained anger and aggression.

Veyers Boranova had arrived to class.

Chapter 095

Betrayer

Veyers was a frustrating part of the time loop mystery for Zorian. The fact that he had been

deliberately erased from Zach’s mind and that he started each restart dead made him a strong

suspect for the real identity of Red Robe. However, that raised the question of how Veyers had

managed to become a permanent looper. It couldn’t have been through the method Zorian had used

– everything he and Zach knew indicated that had been pure luck, and that deliberately replicating it

would be both hard and dangerous. Zorian’s conversation with Panaxeth had fully convinced Zorian

that Zach was the original Controller of the loop, so Red Robe must have come later. That meant he

had probably become a looper through the temporary marker given by the imperial crown… which

meant that he had only had six months to figure out a way to permanently join the time loop.

Did Veyers really possess the skills necessary to pull that off? He was just an inexperienced

teenager. He had a crippling condition that made his magic and personality unstable. He was not

considered a social genius or a magic prodigy, even before his botched ignition ritual. There was no

way he could have developed his magic sufficiently to pull it off in mere six months, and organizing a

group that could have done so in his stead would have taken considerable amount of social

shrewdness.

Not to mention that Veyers would have had to do all this while keeping Zach in the dark about

everything. Zach wasn’t very paranoid, and was probably even less so in the past, but that couldn’t

have been easy regardless.

Still, Zorian could see how it could have worked. Perhaps Zach had really come to like Veyers for

some reason and had done most of the work himself. Perhaps he had brought the other boy into the

time loop again and again, figured out a way to stabilize his magic, and helped him advance his

skills in the fastest and most convenient manner possible. Perhaps there had even been a time

when Zach had gone through the trouble of recruiting Quatach-Ichl and other soul magic experts in

order to figure out a way to crack the secrets of the temporary marker… so that he could bring his

best pal Veyers permanently into the time loop.

In order to be Red Robe, Veyers didn’t have to be a resourceful mastermind that achieved what he

and Zach could not in just six months… he could have simply been an opportunistic, heartless traitor

who stabbed Zach in the back after his fellow time looper had given him everything he could.

It was all pure speculation, of course. Concrete answers about Veyers were basically impossible to

find inside the time loop. Veyers himself obviously couldn’t be questioned, people he was related to

knew nothing useful, Zach did not remember anything about the boy, and Red Robe had left the time

loop. If there were answers regarding Veyers, they would have to wait until Zorian had left the time

loop.

Once he had done so, however, things remained stubbornly unclear. He found out that Red Robe

had gone through the trouble of evacuating Veyers and his lawyer friend immediately after crossing

over to the real world. That greatly increased the chance that Veyers really was Red Robe in his

mind. However, he was then informed by Zach that, in the restarts following his departure, both

Zorian and Silverlake were very much alive. Devoid of any memories of the time loop, but alive. This

was very much unlike Veyers, who was dead and soulless at the beginning of every restart. Didn’t

that basically confirm that Veyers was knocked out of the time loop by the imperial dagger and

couldn’t possibly be Red Robe?

Now, all of those questions had a chance of being answered, because Veyers was finally in front of

them. They didn’t even have to search for him – he had just shown up in class, alone and

defenseless.

Zorian had to admit, he had been caught completely off-guard by the boy’s arrival. If this was Red

Robe, why would he do this? If this was the original Veyers, why would Red Robe allow this? Why,

for the love of all that was holy, had Veyers suddenly come here?

Based on the reactions of everyone around him, Zorian could see that no one, not even Ilsa, knew

the answer to that question.

After briefly staring down everyone, Veyers picked an empty spot not far from Zorian and Briam and

sat down. He ignored everyone staring at him and started to unpack his books and writing supplies

out of his bag, slamming them loudly on the table in front of them in a clear attempt to provoke some

kind of reaction.

“Mister Boranova, what do you think you are doing here?” Ilsa finally asked him.

“What?” he challenged. “I’m attending the class I paid for. Is there a problem?”

“You are no longer a student of this institution,” Ilsa told him, taking a deep breath and clearly

suppressing a sigh. Her voice was tinged with annoyance and she gripped the teaching rod in her

hand a little more tightly in her grip. “You know this.”

“I know no such thing,” Veyers said immediately, shaking his head and making exaggerated faces at

her. “My tuition has been paid in full, I passed my first circle certification with flying colors, and I

received no notification about any changes in my attendance status. How can I no longer be a

student?”

“You attacked people on your disciplinary hearing, mister Boranova,” Ilsa told him. “As a result, you

were expelled from the academy. You know this, I’m sure of this. Why are you doing this to

yourself?”

“That’s a lie. I didn’t attack anyone,” Veyers said stubbornly. “I lost control over my magic and

burned down some furniture. It happens, sometimes. You know this, I’m sure of this. Your institution

had no problem taking my money back in the past, even though they were warned this would be the

case. I was assured that so long no one was hurt and I paid for any damages, I would be allowed to

attend. You have no right to expel me over that incident!”

“It wasn’t me who made the decision, so I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” Ilsa told him.

She didn’t look particularly sympathetic towards him, and probably didn’t really believe him much

either. “Make a complaint to the academy’s legal department if you feel you were wronged.”

“Well, I will!” Veyers exclaimed. “And in the meantime, I will continue to attend the classes I paid for!”

Zorian looked in disbelief as Veyers continued to argue with Ilsa over his expulsion and right to

attend classes. He found the entire situation surreal. It was obvious this Veyers wasn’t Red Robe.

He paid no special attention to Zach and Zorian, his mind and soul were largely unprotected, and his

awful, confrontational attitude was exactly as Zorian remembered it. This was the original Veyers,

untouched by the time loop… for better or for worse.

Why would Red Robe allow this? He had specifically evacuated the original Veyers from his friend’s

house at the start of the restart. Zorian had fully expected Veyers to have been taken to some

secure place, far away from danger. Why would Red Robe go through all that trouble and then just

let the original Veyers come to class and make a scene. It didn’t make sense!

Zorian could try to search for answers by digging around in Veyers’s mind… but the boy did have

some basic protection from mental tampering. He was wearing a pendant with a big green marble

embedded in it – it was projecting a mental shield around Veyers’s mind and would start screeching

and glowing if that barrier was broken or tampered with.

Zorian had seen such pendants before. The shield they created was easy to break, but the alarm on

them was sufficiently trigger-happy that he couldn’t bypass it quietly. He would cause a scene almost

as big as Veyers’s if he mentally assaulted him in the middle of class while he was wearing that.

Not that this would stop Zorian for long, of course. He just needed to pick the right moment and

everything would be over in seconds. The only thing that worried him was that he suspected Veyers

to be some kind of trap by Red Robe. Did the boy have some kind of trap placed inside his mind,

waiting to be triggered by a careless mind reader? Was there someone spying on Veyers, ready to

report them to the authorities when they were caught attacking him?

He started covertly scouting their surroundings while watching Veyers get increasingly agitated as

he argued with Ilsa. The rest of the classmates were also starting to get restless, muttering to each

other in increasingly loud voices. Few of them saw Veyers’s actions in positive light, which no doubt

made him even angrier.

“…must give me back the money I paid for this!” Veyers shouted, banging his hand against the desk

for emphasis. “It’s disgusting and shameless in the extreme that you’re trying to claim my tuition after

expelling me! How brazen and corrupt can you be!?”

“I could say the same thing about you, mister Boranova – how shameless do you have to be to make

this kind of display here and disrupt my class like this?” Ilsa said in a tone that was calmer and more

dignified than Veyers’s, but still noticeably heated. “If you have complaints about money, go speak to

the headmaster or the accounting office. I am not in charge of handling student money and I’m not

familiar with the particulars of your case. All I know is that you have been expelled and that you are

wasting everyone’s time here with your antics. Please leave.”

“Make me,” Veyers challenged. His orange eyes light up with a fiery glow and a notebook he placed

on the table ignited and burst into flames.

Evidently Red Robe didn’t bother to fix his botched ignition ritual.

“Make me,” he repeated angrily. “I’ll burn this whole place down, I swear!”

“Veyers…” Ilsa said, pushing her glasses upwards to massage her eyes in frustration. This was the

first time she was calling him by his first name. “Why must you do this? Don’t you realize you’re just

shooting yourself in the foot? If you really plan to take the academy to court over this, behaving like

this will only give them more ammunition.”

“Trogmar, no!” Briam suddenly yelled.

It was useless. Trogmar, his fire drake familiar, had been completely infuriated by Veyers for some

time already. Now that Veyers had lost control over his powers and started burning things, the fire

drake decided it was done passively waiting for this threat to come to him and his master.

With a fearsome battle screech, the fire drake ripped itself away from Briam’s desperate attempts to

hold him back and leapt over the tables. It crashed into Veyers’s table, scattering books in all

directions, and hissed menacingly at the orange-eyed boy.

Swearing loudly, Veyers hurriedly pushed himself from his desk, fell on his ass in his hurry to evade

the fire drake, and then erupted into a short-ranged fireball centered on himself.

Undaunted, the fire drake took the flames head-on and added his own fire breath to the blaze.

The entire class started screaming and scrambled to get out of the classroom and away from the

burning battlefield.

Well, Zach and Zorian remained calm and collected. They each picked one end of the classroom

and subtly protected their classmates from harm by channeling the flames away from them through

invisible force fields and chilling spells. Aside from them, only Briam and Ilsa did not try to escape

the place. Briam was desperately trying to rein his familiar in and drag him off from the fight, while

Ilsa did her best to keep the fire contained and tried to restrain Veyers and the fire drake in order to

stop the fight.

Ilsa would have normally realized that Zach and Zorian had something to do with the surprising

tendency of the flames to swerve away from the students or lose power before they reached them,

but Zorian was using some light mind magic to draw her attention away from that. It wasn’t

particularly difficult, since there was a big, eye-catching battle in progress, and that attracted most of

her attention anyway.

Of course, the fact Veyers and Briam’s fire drake were throwing fire everywhere and that everyone

was making a huge racket in their attempt to vacate the classroom meant this was a perfect

opportunity for Zorian to covertly disable Veyers’s pendant and invade his mind.

He shared a silent look with Zach, who simply nodded at him. In the next moment, they both struck.

Zach wrapped the pendant in an illusion that made it appear inert no matter what was happening

while Zorian pierced the mental barrier it created and started reading Veyers’s mind and subverting

his will.

Eventually, Ilsa managed to separate the two combatants, aided in no small part by Zorian mentally

forcing them both to back down. Briam immediately dragged off his familiar away from Veyers,

calming the fire drake down and inspecting him to see if he got hurt in the fight. As for Veyers, he

simply collapsed unconscious all of a sudden. Zorian found it easier to memory search people when

they were not mentally struggling against him all the time, and he had already gotten everything he

could have out of his surface thoughts alone.

He was just about to convince Ilsa to let him and Zach carry Veyers off to a hospital or something

when she suddenly spoke up.

“You two… have you been here all this time?” she asked, glancing towards Zach and Zorian.

“Yes,” Zach confirmed. “We know some basic spells, so we stayed to see if we could help

somehow.”

“A bit reckless, but commendable,” Ilsa said. “Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished in this

world. I need some uninvolved witnesses when I speak to the headmaster about this, and since you

were here from start to finish, you fit the bill perfectly. You’ll be coming with me after I clean up the

classroom.”

Zach and Zorian shared a look before lightly shrugging at each other. This was perfect, really – they

got to stay close to Veyers for quite a while, giving Zorian plenty of time to rummage through his

memories, and they didn’t even have to make up some contrived excuse to do so.

“Okay,” Zorian agreed easily.

Ilsa nodded at them, pleased they had no intention of trying to weasel out of it. She conjured a disc

of force and levitated Veyers on top of it, before turning towards Briam.

Zach took the chance when her back was turned and telekinetically crushed Veyers’s mind shield

pendant into scrap. It gave off one final ear-piercing screech and a flash of light, invisible and

inaudible through the illusion Zach placed on it earlier, and then went completely inert.

“Briam, you and your familiar are coming along as well,” she told him.

“This… Teacher, I don’t know what came into him! I–” stammered Briam, clutching the fire drake in

his arms tighter to his chest. Trogmar had largely calmed down at this point, increasingly aware that

his master was not happy with what he had done.

“I understand,” Ilsa sighed. “I don’t think you will receive a serious punishment… especially since

Veyers is the other involved party. You really need to keep a better grip on your fire drake, however.

Veyers started things, but this isn’t a good look for you, either.”

“Yes,” he nodded quickly.

“Let’s go, then,” Ilsa said, gesturing towards the door.

She strode off towards the Headmaster’s office, followed by Zach and Zorian, Briam and his fire

drake, and an unconscious Veyers on a floating ectoplasmic disc. She found Akoja and a number of

other students waiting outside the classroom door, curious to see the resolution of the incident, and

promptly recruited some of them as additional witnesses before telling the rest the class was

canceled for the day and that they were free to go.

Zorian handed off his body to the mind of a distant simulacrum before focusing all of his attention on

the memories locked inside Veyers’s head…

- break -

“So… were you the one who pushed Briam’s drake into doing that?” Zach asked him later.

“No, that was completely spontaneous,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “I had nothing to do with it.”

The questioning had lasted for hours, and Veyers had managed to wake up by the end of it. Without

any memories of mental tampering, of course. He then yelled out all sorts of threats to everyone in

the room and stormed off angrily, thus marking the end of that particular meeting.

Zach and Zorian decided to retreat to Noveda Mansion to discuss what happened.

“What did you get out of Veyers, then?” Zach asked. “You don’t look very excited, so I’m guessing

very little.”

“Sort of,” Zorian admitted. “As you might expect, he doesn’t know who Red Robe is. He doesn’t even

remember what happened when he and his lawyer friend were evacuated at the beginning of the

restart – that part of his memories was thoroughly erased, and I can’t find out anything about it.”

“Of course,” Zach scoffed. “If he knew Red Robe’s plans or identity, no way would Red Robe send

him to class like this. What was even the point of that, I wonder? This was way too petty to be a

legitimate part of Red Robe’s master plan.”

“I don’t think this is something Red Robe thought up,” Zorian said. “From what I could glean in

Veyers’s mind, our former classmate has had this on his mind for quite a while. Long before this

month began.”

“Wait, so this is his idea?” Zach said incredulously.

“If you could remember Veyers, you’d know this is exactly the sort of thing he would do,” Zorian said.

“He thought his expulsion was unfair and decided to do something about it. I doubt he saw the

situation developing as it did, but he definitely came to class with the goal of making a stand against

the academy and drawing attention to his case.”

“So this had nothing to do with Red Robe?” Zach asked, frowning.

“No, this was just Veyers being Veyers,” Zorian answered. “In fact, I suspect this was the reason

Red Robe wiped out your memories of Veyers when he took a sledgehammer to your mind.”

“What?” asked Zach, giving him a shocked look. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“Veyers probably did this in every single restart while he was still alive,” Zorian said.

“Come to our first class and start a fight with Briam’s fire drake, you mean?” Zach asked.

“Yeah,” Zorian nodded. “We always wondered why Red Robe bothered to erase your memories of

Veyers, considering you wouldn’t normally even interact with him…”

“…but if he normally showed up for class to make a scene, it would be very strange for him to

suddenly stop coming,” Zach said, eyes lighting up in realization. “If Red Robe is Veyers, he

probably didn’t want to go through this at the beginning of every restart just to keep up a charade.

It’s a waste of time, and he probably cringed inside at the thought of what an idiot he used to be.

However, him being absent from class would immediately tip me off that something is wrong with

him… unless I no longer remember him.”

“That still begs the question, though… why would Red Robe allow Veyers to expose himself like this

after going to the trouble of saving him at the start of the month?” Zorian asked.

“We didn’t kill him,” Zach pointed out.

“Yes, but how would Red Robe know for sure what we would or would not do to Veyers?” Zorian

countered. “He was playing with Veyers’s life by letting him come here. Plus, even if he scrubbed his

memories clean of any sensitive information, he can’t know for sure that he didn’t leave anything of

importance behind. It’s just a pointless risk. If I was in Red Robe’s place, I’d never let this happen. I’d

trap Veyers in a dungeon and sedate him if I had to. Does Red Robe even care about the welfare of

the original Veyers?”

“I don’t know if that logic really holds,” Zach told him dubiously. “You also brought your little sister

here, even though you knew this placed her in greater danger. You cared more about fulfilling her

wishes than making her perfectly safe.”

Zorian made a sour face at that. He hated when Zach was right like that…

“Anyway, even if Red Robe doesn’t know what you would do, he does know me… well, presumably.

I would never just kill Veyers for no reason, even if he does have some tenuous connection to our

opponent. None of this is his fault, really. Does he even have any connection to the Cult or the

Ibasans?”

“No, that’s all Jornak,” said Zorian, shaking his head. “And Veyers doesn’t know about that, either.”

“Right. So there is no reason for us to go after original Veyers,” Zach said. “He’s just a dumb kid with

no way to threaten us. Killing him would be really petty. We didn’t even kill the original Silverlake,

even though she could be a real headache if time looper Silverlake manages to recruit her to her

side.”

“I guess,” Zorian said, not really convinced yet. “I still think it’s very weird. I thought him showing up

was maybe some kind of trap, but it doesn’t appear this is correct…”

“I put a tracker on him before he left,” Zach said. “If he goes back to Red Robe…”

“He won’t,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “This is Red Robe cutting him off and letting him sink or

swim on his own. He’ll go either back to his family or maybe to his lawyer friend. Assuming Jornak

goes back to his home, that is.”

They talked about the issue for some time before Zorian decided it was time to leave. Sadly, another

thing cropped up before he had a chance to set off.

Placed on the doorstep of Noveda Mansion was a simple white envelope addressed to ‘Zach

Noveda and Zorian Kazinski’. After thoroughly analyzing it for traps, the two of them opened it and

found a letter waiting for them inside.

It was just a sheet of normal, non-magical paper with a few words scrawled on it in fancy, formal

handwriting.

Thank you for showing mercy.

Perhaps we can come to an agreement after all.

Let’s talk.

You can pick a time and place for the meeting.

You know how to contact me.

There was no return address, signature, or name of the sender on the letter… but it was obvious

who sent it.

Just as it was obvious that they couldn’t refuse the invitation.

- break -

It was already late in the evening and Zorian was slowly making his way to Imaya’s place. He wasn’t

in a hurry. His thoughts were still stuck on the letter they received back at the Noveda estate. A

meeting with Red Robe… what could the third time traveler want to talk to them about? As far as

Zorian could see, they were completely and unavoidably opposed to each other. There was very

little they could agree upon, and they couldn’t really trust each other to stick to any such agreement

anyway.

Especially since Zorian strongly suspected Red Robe got into the time loop by backstabbing Zach. A

person like that couldn’t be trusted at all…

As he was passing through one of the many Cyoria city parks, he suddenly stopped and turned

towards the small fountain in the center. He had detected a familiar mental and soul signature in that

direction.

There was a young woman sitting there, on the edge of the fountain. She was roughly 20 years of

age, tall and beautiful, with long black hair and a feminine figure – the sort of beauty that made men

turn around as they walked and remained stuck in their head for a while. Also, she was completely

unfamiliar to Zorian. He had never seen this woman before in his entire life, he was sure. And yet…

She grinned at him cheekily, patting at the spot next to her, as if inviting him to join her. Some of the

men around him cast him dark, jealous glances in response.

Zorian ignored the invitation for a second, directing his attention to the roof of a nearby building,

where a large raven was inconspicuously sitting and observing the scene below.

Zorian cautiously approached the smiling woman, his expression darkening. When he was closer to

her, he stopped. He could feel a ward field spring into existence around them, but he did nothing to

stop it. He could immediately recognize it as a basic privacy ward, meant to stop people from

listening in on them.

“Hello, Silverlake,” he said. “You look much better than you did the last time we talked.”

“Ha ha, you flatterer!” she told him. “I feel better! My mind is clearer, my bones do not ache, and I no

longer get tired as easily. Being young again is everything I hoped for, and more!”

“Is this really what you looked like when you were younger, though?” Zorian asked her curiously.

“I have no idea,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t have any paintings of myself when I was younger, but

I do remember being quite a looker in my younger days. Anyone who could legitimately call me out

on this little bit of vanity is long dead, so who cares?”

“Little bit of vanity…” Zorian repeated quietly.

“Yes, just a little bit,” Silverlake said, pretending to adjust her hair while smiling at him brightly. “You

know, you should try not to frown so much. It will give you wrinkles.”

“You were surprisingly quiet so far,” Zorian pointed out. “What’s up with that?”

“Ah, you know… there’s always something,” she said dismissively. “An emergency here, an

emergency there, and you suddenly lost two days with nothing to show for it. It’s frustrating, but

that’s life.”

“Indeed,” said Zorian, glancing to the nearby roof where the raven was intently watching them. “I see

you got yourself a new familiar. What happened to your old raven?”

Silverlake stopped smiling at him.

“I guess Panaxeth couldn’t get him out of the time loop along with you,” Zorian continued. “That must

have hurt. I heard it’s not healthy to lose a soul-bonded familiar like that. Especially for witches like

yourself. Witches are known for having well-developed familiar-related magic, which probably

translates into an even deeper link to their partner animals. Your soul must have suffered

considerable damage when you were incarnated into that pretty new body of yours…”

“You know, you have been unusually passive yourself,” Silverlake remarked. “I would have expected

you to move faster and bolder than this. I’m guessing your arrival here has not been very smooth

either.”

“I guess you could say that,” Zorian said. “I’m mostly recovered by now, though.”

“What a coincidence. So am I,” said Silverlake with a happy laugh. She suddenly gave him a serious

look. “Besides, we both know it isn’t my spellwork that really worries you and your ‘friend’. It’s the

knowledge I possess about your skills, resources, contacts, and tactics.”

Zorian frowned at her weird emphasis on the word ‘friend’, but in the end decided not to pursue that

for the moment.

“Why are you here, Silverlake?” Zorian asked her seriously. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you on the

spot?”

“Ha ha! What, you’ll attack me in the middle of a crowded park?” she said, sweeping her hand to

point at the various people milling around them. Some of them were even curiously observing them,

unable to hear what they’re saying but clearly speculating what two mages like them could be

discussing like this.

“It might be worth it to take down a traitor like you,” Zorian told her.

“Ha. You know, I never told Red Robe most of the information about you that I possess,” she said.

Zorian frowned at the statement.

“If I die here, however, the dead man’s switch I made will activate and everything I know will fall into

his lap,” she said with a triumphant grin. She crossed her legs one over another and threw her head

back in a self-satisfied pose. “Killing me here would be a very serious mistake. You’re a smart,

sensible kid, so I know you’ll make the right choice.”

After a few seconds, Zorian decided she was probably telling the truth. The way Red Robe had been

behaving these past few days, it was obvious he lacked the sort of deep knowledge about Zach and

Zorian that he should have had if Silverlake had simply spilled everything immediately.

“Alright. I guess you have a point there,” Zorian admitted. “That still leaves the question of why you

came here. You were clearly waiting for me. What do you want?”

“What? Not going to thank me for keeping your secrets?” Silverlake complained.

“Whatever your reason for doing that, I’m sure it’s purely selfish and aimed squarely on maximizing

your gains in this. I’m guessing you were trying to pressure Red Robe into making some sort of

concession by not handing all the information over to him immediately, but it ultimately doesn’t

matter. All that matters is that any benefit we get out of this is purely incidental. What is there to

thank you for?” Zorian challenged.

“So judgmental,” Silverlake sighed dramatically. “It’s because I’m a witch, isn’t it? It’s always like

this… we’re only good for making potions and doing people’s dirty work, and then it’s back to the

woods with you…”

“I don’t have time for this,” Zorian told her, turning to leave. “I think I’m going to practice my aim on

that raven over there and then go home.”

“There’s still time for you to join me, you know?” Silverlake called out, not a trace of panic or

annoyance in her voice.

Zorian’s back remained turned away from her, but he did turn his head towards her to give her an

incredulous look.

“I know I sound stupid to say that…” she began.

“Yeah, you do,” Zorian confirmed.

“…but I really think you should hear me out,” she continued. “Remember when we were talking

about your ‘friend’ and how weird I made the word sound?”

“Yes?” Zorian confirmed, finally turning around to properly face her.

“That was your cue to ask me what I mean by that, silly boy. Must I draw a picture for you or

something? Zach is no friend of people like us.”

“People like us?” Zorian asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I’m sure you know by now that I have entered into a bit of a contract with the primordial

trapped in Cyoria,” Silverlake said.

“A death pact to release it by the end of the month or die trying,” Zorian said.

“Yes, more or less,” Silverlake agreed. “But I’m not the only one who made a death pact. Your

‘friend’ has also made a death pact.”

What?

“That’s bullshit,” Zorian said. “Zach could leave the time loop at any time. Why would he need to

make a deal with Panaxeth?”

“Not with the primordial, you numbskull,” Silverlake rolled her eyes at him. “With the angels! He

made a death pact with the angels to stop the release of the primordial… while making sure no one

could find out about the existence of the time loop. Even if he prevents Panaxeth’s release, so long

as there is even a single person who knows about the time loop by the end of the month, he is going

to die. Never mind people who literally originate from the time loop like me and you… even people

you tell about the time loop must either die or have their memory erased, or he will not survive this

month.”

Zorian froze momentarily, his brain stuttering for a second. He fully expected Zach to have some sort

of compulsion embedded inside his mind, but this…

“How do you know this?” Zorian asked her quietly. “Did Panaxeth tell you this?”

“The primordial cannot directly discuss this,” Silverlake said. “He hinted at it, and Red Robe

explained the details of it to me later. I don’t know how he knows so much about it, but presumably

Zach told him that personally while he still remembered.”

“He could be lying,” Zorian pointed out.

“Yes, but I don’t think he is,” Silverlake said. She gave him a knowing look. “And you probably don’t

think so either.”

Zorian said nothing.

“Don’t think for a second that Zach doesn’t know about this, either,” Silverlake said. “As someone

who is laboring under this sort of contract, I can tell you right now that deals with primordials are not

that easy to get out of. I already tried to erase my memories to void the contract, and it didn’t work.

The pact is branded directly into my soul, and I am constantly aware of its terms. I can forget the

details of how I got it, but not the core contents of it. Zach is the same. Remember how he

‘mysteriously’ knew he had to find a way to beat the invasion? And how he – seemingly foolishly –

insisted on trying to take it on all on his lonesome?”

Zorian still said nothing, though his posture slumped a little in response.

In retrospect, there were a number of things about Zach that fit this idea. His strong insistence that

he would never use the temporary looper markers, for instance, which always seemed a little

strange to his eyes… until he suddenly changed his mind about that.

Or the fact that Zach was clearly a very proactive and social person before he started working with

Zorian, but became increasingly passive and even slightly fatalistic once they started working

together.

“I understand what you’re getting at, but I think you’ve badly misjudged the situation,” Zorian told

Silverlake. “I don’t think Zach is out to kill me. And I don’t think he would have been out to kill you if

you had kept your trust in us and helped us make an exit for ourselves. With your help, we could

have physically left the loop, laden with knowledge and resources of the time loop. Was it really

worth it to give that up just for a chance of a younger body that you would have gotten eventually,

anyway?”

“In the end, aren’t you and Zach the only ones who successfully left that place?” Silverlake

challenged, a defiant look on her face. “How do you know my presence would have made a

difference? You don’t. If I stayed, I would have faced extremely low chances of success while

working for a person that needs to kill me once we got outside. You can hate me all you want, but I

think I made the right choice.”

“Hmph,” Zorian scoffed, turning back to leave again.

“Do you seriously think you can trust Zach, knowing all you do now?” Silverlake called out.

“More than I can trust you,” Zorian responded without turning back.

The raven on the nearby roof suddenly took flight and disappeared into the horizon.

Behind him, Silverlake shapeshifted into a raven before flying off herself, this time in the opposite

direction her familiar went.

Well, Zorian actually strongly suspected that the Silverlake he spoke to was her raven familiar,

whereas the raven on the roof had been the real Silverlake. As much as she tried to pretend she

didn’t fear him attacking her, he felt she wouldn’t risk herself so easily.

He sped up his pace, putting some distance between himself and the people that were commenting

on the spectacle of an attractive woman suddenly shapeshifting into a bird and flying off, before

deliberately entering a dark, isolated alley devoid of people.

He kept walking for a while before suddenly stopping and turning around.

“Are you really going to keep following me all the way to Imaya’s place like this?” he asked.

Only silence greeted him. The alley was dark and still, and there was no trace of anyone here beside

him. He was stubborn, however, and kept staring at one particular patch of darkness without making

any moves.

After a full minute of this, he was just about to start throwing magic missiles at the spot when the

familiar figure of Zach stepped out of the shadows.

“Took you long enough,” Zorian said, relaxing a little. But only a little. “You’ve been following me

ever since I left the Noveda estate, didn’t you?”

“Err, yes,” Zach admitted. “Sorry. I just… I don’t know. I had a bad feeling and decided to shadow

you in secret. I figured that if I was right, I get to save the day, and if I was just being paranoid, you’d

never even know. I guess I overestimated my stealth skills a little.”

“Honestly, if Silverlake didn’t put me on guard, it’s entirely possible I could have missed you,” Zorian

admitted. He paused for a second. “You heard my conversation with her, didn’t you?”

Zach’s shoulders slumped a little.

“So it’s true,” Zorian said, getting a little angry. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know the details,” Zach said defensively. “I didn’t know I’d made a deal with angels, or even

that it was a deal. All I knew was that I have these… instincts… that tell me things. I can’t really talk

about them…”

“Can’t or won’t?” Zorian asked.

“Can’t,” Zach said. “I get tongue-tied whenever I try.”

“And if I read your mind to find out?” Zorian asked.

“I will have to kill you,” Zach told him seriously.

“Oh,” Zorian said, swallowing heavily. He didn’t think he had any chance against Zach, even now.

He did have that one trump card that nobody except him knew about, but he needed proper timing to

use that, and Zach would probably kill him before he could set it up… “Err, good thing I never tried to

forcibly read your mind while you were sleeping or something…”

“Yes, very good thing,” Zach agreed.

A short, uncomfortable silence descended on the scene.

“You already decided to die at the end of the month, didn’t you?” Zorian asked him. “That’s why you

had gotten so weird and philosophical lately…”

“I don’t intend to murder you once this is all done, if that’s what you’re asking,” Zach told him.

“Silverlake is just a black-hearted witch with no understanding of things like basic human decency

and personal integrity. If I wanted to survive at all costs, I would have gotten rid of you while we were

still in the time loop.”

“I can’t believe this…” Zorian muttered. “If I had known about this earlier, maybe we could have–”

“It’s divine magic,” Zach said. “We wouldn’t have been able to do shit. Just like Silverlake can’t get

rid of her death pact no matter how hard she tries. She’s a witch. They’re known for being skilled

with geas. You just know she used every trick in the book to try and get out of the contract, but she

still failed.”

“So you’re okay with just dying at the end of the month?” Zorian asked.

“Of course I’m not fine with it!” Zach said. “It’s just… if I have to murder my friends to survive, then

what’s the point of all this power and knowledge? It’s not… it’s not how I want to live my life, okay?

Damn it… what the hell was my old self thinking to agree to this?”

Zach slumped against the nearby alley and lightly thumped his head against the wall.

What a horrible, convoluted mess, Zorian thought.

As if outmaneuvering Red Robe and Silverlake was not enough, he now had to figure out how to

keep Zach alive when the end of the month came calling.

Sometimes, he thought the gods were still out there, watching him and laughing at his misfortune.

Chapter 096

Contract

Before the time loop, Zorian had never frequented the taverns, restaurants and other establishments

that were so common in Cyoria. They were a waste of time and money in his opinion, and it wasn’t

like he had any real friends to go drinking with. It didn’t help that he had seen more than one of his

classmates succumb to the lure of big city life in his two years of education. Rural teenagers like him

were especially vulnerable, since they had little to no parental supervision and were unaccustomed

to the luxuries and opportunities that existed in Cyoria. Zorian did not want to follow their example,

especially after it became obvious that his brother Fortov had fallen into the exact same trap as they

had.

Amusingly, the time loop had pretty much made him worse in this regard, and he was now familiar

with virtually every alcohol-serving establishment in Cyoria. This was mostly Zach’s fault – his fellow

time traveler loved drinking and despised the static nature of the time loop, which meant he dragged

Zorian off to a different place every time they had to meet or talk.

The situation was similar at the moment. Once they’d both had a chance to gather their thoughts,

Zorian tried to pursue the topic of Zach’s angelic contract and the restrictions he was laboring under,

only for his fellow time traveler to insist he needed a drink. Zorian himself had never understood the

appeal of alcohol, but he also knew it was pointless to argue about things like that with Zach. He just

let his friend lead him to a small but lively tavern, where they claimed a table and erected simple

privacy wards to ensure some privacy. Still not the safest location for this kind of thing, but it would

do.

“Ahh…” said Zach in satisfaction, slamming a beer glass on the table before wiping his mouth on his

sleeve. Zorian’s mouth twitched at the sight, but he said nothing. He was already used to that kind of

behavior from Zach, really. “I really needed that.”

“So. Can I spoil the mood now and dig a little more into this whole angelic contract thing?” Zorian

asked him, folding his fingers together in a thoughtful gesture.

“I guess,” Zach shrugged. “Though I really don’t think I’ll be able to tell you much.”

“I just need some things confirmed,” Zorian said. “You said you can’t talk about the contract thing…

that it physically stops you from saying the words… but would it stop me from picking it up from your

thoughts through telepathy?”

Zach looked uncomfortable for a moment, his eyebrows twisted into a thoughtful frown.

“It shouldn’t,” he eventually decided. “I mean, we communicated through telepathy quite a few times

in the past. You read my surface thoughts more than once, and I never felt any urge to attack you.

Let’s try it.”

Zorian felt Zach lowering his mental barriers and immediately started looking through his surface

thoughts. Which… appeared to be completely empty.

Blank, even.

“Are you thinking about the angel contract at the moment?” Zorian asked, frowning.

“I’m thinking of the ‘mysterious rules’ that I’m laboring under,” Zach told him. “If that’s really a death

pact with the angels like Silverlake was saying, then yes, I’m thinking about it. Why?”

“I can’t read anything from you,” Zorian admitted. “It’s like you have no thoughts at all.”

It didn’t work. No matter what trick or method they used, Zorian could not get anything about a

contract from Zach’s surface thoughts. It wasn’t that he could not read the boy at all – he could

interpret Zach’s thoughts just fine when he was thinking about mundane things, like how his hand

itched or how cute the passing waitress was, but every thought that involved the ‘mysterious rules’,

as Zach called them, was invisible to Zorian.

The effect was both subtle and sophisticated. There was no indication that Zach’s thoughts were

being magically blanked out, and it looked mostly like Zach was deliberately blanking his thoughts or

just plain not thinking of anything. If Zach tried to embed a few relevant thoughts in a larger stream

of consciousness, the restriction would not only unerringly pick out the offending parts, it would do its

best to quietly erase them without leaving any suspicious pauses or other evidence of tampering.

Unless someone spent a lot of time scrutinizing Zach’s thoughts or already knew what to look for, it

would be very easy to overlook the fact that some of the thoughts had been tampered with.

How was the contract even doing that? Zorian had no idea how something like that could get

accomplished without the contract itself being sapient in some fashion. But that couldn’t really be

true, right?

“What if I tried to read your memories?” Zorian asked.

“No!” Zach immediately and reflexively protested. He stared at him for a second before shaking his

head, seemingly reasserting control over himself in that one moment. “No. Bad idea.”

Zorian nodded slowly, making a placating gesture.

“Alright,” he said carefully. “But you know, someone has already read your mind once. As well as

erased a bunch of things in it...”

“Red Robe,” Zach nodded.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “Doesn’t that… make you murderous, I guess?”

“Well, it kind of did,” Zach said, scratching his hand. “Remember when we first met and I told you I

had a confrontation with Red Robe for the first couple of restarts after he disabled me and read my

mind? I made it seem like he was the aggressor all the time and I was just an innocent victim, but… I

may have been simplifying things just a little bit. I basically made it my life’s goal to destroy him for a

while there. I hounded him relentlessly for at least two restarts. It may have been one of the reasons

why he decided to leave the time loop entirely after a while.”

“Oh,” said Zorian. That… made a lot of sense, actually. “But you were both time travelers. What

would you even do to him if you managed to catch him?”

“You don’t need to be a master mind mage to erase the victim’s entire mind,” Zach told him. “Or

scramble it beyond all repair. There are spells for that, and I got ahold of all kinds of illegal spells

while looping.”

“You got me there,” Zorian admitted. The sort of effect Zach was describing did not take much skill

and sophistication; just power. “I notice you aren’t frothing at the mouth right now at the thought of

Red Robe being present again, though. Does the effect run out or something?”

“Yeah, I calmed down after a while, since I could no longer find him,” Zach said with a shrug. “Even

after I left the time loop and saw Red Robe again, it didn’t start up again. I guess the angels didn’t

want me to become useless if someone read my mind and then fled beyond my reach.”

“So I should have just forcibly read your mind and then spent a few restarts running away from you?”

Zorian mused.

Zach scowled at him.

“What? You have to admit that’s a reasonable interpretation of what is happening,” Zorian said.

Except that he was not at all sure he could have successfully evaded Zach for several restarts. His

fellow time traveler had vastly more endurance than Zorian did, and knew most of the places and

escape routes Zorian could come up with. Zorian might have still been able to avoid any permanent

consequences of being caught if he forced a restart every time he was forced into a corner, but

doing so would rapidly burn through their remaining restarts.

“Anyway, what about the first time Red Robe messed with your mind?” Zorian asked. “You know, the

one where he erased Veyers out of your mind and gods know what else?”

“I don’t know,” Zach said, frowning. “I don’t recall going on that kind of hunt for someone before we

met. I guess since I had no idea who mind raped me, and perhaps didn’t even know there was a

specific person behind my amnesia, the effect never kicked in.”

“Hmm,” Zorian mused. “So if you never find out that you had your memory read or never see your

attacker–”

“It won’t work. I’m no longer the same person I was back then. I will know I had my mind tampered

with, and I’ll know it was you,” Zach warned him. “And not just because you just stupidly clued me in

that you’re considering it, either. I mean, who else but you could pull it off? Even if I had absolutely

no proof, my first instinct would be to blame you.”

“And then you’d try to kill me,” Zorian guessed.

“That, or erase your relevant memories,” Zach said. “But we both know how impractical that option is

on a mind mage like yourself. In practice… yes, I’d have to kill you.”

So. The contract could mask Zach’s surface thoughts to eliminate any mention of itself, but it

couldn’t do the same for his long-term memories for some reason. Thus, anyone who looked deep

into Zach’s memories had to be… silenced.

In whatever manner was practical.

“Who determines who has to be memory wiped and who has to die?” Zorian asked.

“What do you mean?” Zach asked.

“What if Ilsa read your memories?” Zorian clarified with an example. “Would you memory wipe her or

kill her?”

“Memory wipe her,” Zach said immediately.

“Really? But she has some pretty advanced knowledge of mind magic under her belt,” Zorian

pointed out. “She’s possibly even better than Xvim in that regard.”

“Really?” Zach said, surprised. “Huh. I would have never guessed. Damn… I guess I would have to

kill her in that case.”

Zorian stared at Zach for a second.

He lied. Ilsa had no advanced knowledge of mind magic. She knew how to cast telepathy spells, and

that was it.

Guess that answered his question – Zach was the one that made the decision. The contract may

force him to act in certain ways, but it was Zach’s perception that determined things…

“What?” Zach asked.

“Nothing,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Let’s forget that, then. There is something else I’ve been

wondering. Silverlake said you have to make sure the time loop stays a secret or you die, right?”

“Right,” Zach sighed. “She did say that, didn’t she? Of course, I can’t really confirm or deny

anything…”

“But it’s pretty much true,” Zorian surmised. “However, back in the time loop, I recall that you tried to

convince pretty much everyone who would listen that the time loop was real. Or at least you told me

you did so. Plus, you never had any issue with helping me convince people that the time loop was

real.”

“Well yeah, I’m not compelled to keep it a secret,” Zach shrugged. “I can’t talk to people about the

‘mysterious rules’ that bind me, but everything else is fair game. I can tell people about the time loop

just fine, I just have to keep in mind the potential consequences. And… while the time loop was still

going on, those consequences were a non-issue, you know?”

“Right. You only die if the knowledge of the time loop isn’t contained in the real world, when it

actually matters. It doesn’t matter how many people you tell inside the time loop, because they’ll

never get out of there anyway,” Zorian guessed. “Or at least that was the idea, probably.”

“Keep in mind, I had no idea how the time loop worked back then,” Zach said. “I didn’t know there

was a real world and the time loop world, or any other details that we figured out later. I wasn’t lying

to you when I said I don’t remember how I got in the time loop and how it functions.”

Right. That was pretty terrible design by the angels. If they could make sure that the contract they

made with Zach was impossible to forget by any means, why didn’t they include some basic

information there as well?

Alanic apparently wasn’t kidding when he said angels worked in mysterious ways.

“If you didn’t know how the time loop works, how did you know when telling people about the time

loop matters and when it doesn’t?” Zorian asked.

Zach couldn’t answer him, of course. That would mean he would reveal some of the information

about his contract thing, and that was forbidden.

“Well, we have no real choice here,” Zorian said. “If you can’t discuss these mysterious rules you are

laboring under, and you don’t even have a solid idea what they mean, we’ll have to summon the

angels for a talk.”

Zach gave him a surprised look.

“But you…” he began.

“I’m not supposed to be here, outside the time loop, yes,” Zorian said, nodding.

This was the primary reason they had been hesitating about contacting the angelic hierarchy, even

though they had already suspected the angels were involved in the time loop. It was entirely possible

that summoning an angel would just draw their attention to Zorian’s existence and give them a

chance to finish what the Guardian of the Threshold had already tried and failed to do.

“We’d be risking a lot,” Zach said, frowning.

“No, I’m risking a lot,” countered Zorian. “And I’m willing to take the risk. We need to see if this

contract of yours can be re-negotiated, or at least find out what it actually entails.”

Zach gave it a brief thought, tapping his fingers against the beer glass in his hand.

“Well… it’s not like I was looking forward to dying,” Zach finally said. “Though if the angels

immediately smite you dead upon sight, don’t come crying to me that I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t be doing anything at that point, being dead and all,” Zorian blandly pointed out. “Anyway,

Silverlake said you made a contract to stop Panaxeth from being released at the end of the month. If

true, that suggests the angels care a lot about keeping Panaxeth in his prison. Killing me would

interfere with that. Plus, silencing all the extra witnesses is impossible so long as Red Robe lives.

Hopefully that will give them pause.”

Well, that all made perfect sense to Zorian, but it was obvious that the logic of angels was not the

same as the logic of men. It wouldn’t be too surprising if the summoned angel just ignored

everything Zorian said and tried to kill him anyway.

Would it be considered disrespectful if he sent a simulacrum instead of participating in the

summoning personally?

“You really think there is a chance to renegotiate… this?” Zach asked, waving vaguely over his

chest.

It was unlikely. But hey, it was worth a try, right?

“The contract is probably divine magic, right?” Zorian asked, ignoring the question for now.

“I… don’t actually know,” Zach said uncertainly. “It has to be. I mean, otherwise I would have

managed to find it by now, right? The only piece of mortal magic I ever found embedded in my soul

is the marker…”

Zorian shook his head. He was pretty sure the marker did not include any divine energies or

‘mysterious rules’ in it… because if it did, Zorian himself would have probably inherited them from

Zach when he acquired his marker.

“It’s probably a part of the soul stabilization frame that boosts your mana reserves,” Zorian pointed

out. “The divine blessing and divine contract probably came together as a package deal.”

Zach winced slightly.

“Yes, I kind of guessed that too,” he admitted. “But that whole frame is incredibly complicated… it’s

hard to figure out where the blessing ends and the contract starts.”

Yes, that was pretty much how Zorian expected it to be. The blessing and contract were probably

intertwined in a way that made it impossible to remove one and not the other. That way, even if Zach

found a way to remove the contract, he would have to give up the mana boost that came along with

it.

An extra layer of security that would make just about anyone hesitate to tamper with the whole thing.

After all, who would be willing to lose something as amazing as a divine blessing that doubles your

mana reserves?

“Even if the angels agree to renegotiate, you’d probably have to give up your divine blessing,” Zorian

eventually said.

Zach looked horrified at the thought, but also a little bit resigned. He seemed to have expected

something like that to be true.

“Aw, man…” he whined, finishing his entire beer glass in one desperate gulp before ordering another

from a nearby waitress.

“It’s better than being dead,” Zorian consoled him.

“I don’t know, man… how would you react if you had to give up half of your mana reserves

tomorrow?” Zach asked him sullenly.

Zorian blinked rapidly in surprise. That’s right… Zach didn’t even know his mana reserves were a

result of a divine blessing until relatively recently. The current situation had persisted as far as he

could remember. His mana reserves felt normal as they were right now, and reducing them probably

felt no different than a crippling injury…

“I’d be absolutely devastated, but it’s still better than dying,” he finally said, a little quieter this time.

Zach gave him a cranky grunt and said nothing else in response.

“How are we going to summon an angel, anyway?” Zach eventually asked, calming down a little

when he got his second glass of beer delivered to their table. “Alanic?”

“Alanic can’t summon an angel,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Only a few priests are capable of

that, and he is not one of them. However, I happen to know someone in this very city who is capable

of summoning angels, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Though we might want to invite Alanic with us,

anyway.”

“Oh? Who is it?” Zach asked curiously. “I don’t remember anyone like that.”

“You wouldn’t know her. I haven’t really interacted with her ever since we teamed up,” Zorian noted.

“It’s Kylae Kuosi, a priestess in one of the semi-abandoned temples here in Cyoria. She is a bit of an

obscure figure, but she’s a capable mage and she knows quite a bit of interesting magic. For

instance, she is one of the ‘experts’ when it comes to forecasting the future through divinations…

and she also knows how to establish contact with the angels. It didn’t matter much in the time loop,

since contact with the spiritual planes had been blocked there, but now…”

“Alright,” Zach said after a second of thought. “Let’s see what the heavenly bastards have to say.”

- break -

It took them three days to arrange for the summoning to occur. It wasn’t particularly difficult, but

Kylae was understandably very suspicious about a couple of teenagers showing up on her doorstep

and asking for her to summon an angel so they could talk to it. The fact that Zach and Zorian were in

a hurry and were pushing for her to set up the ritual quickly did not help matters. Thankfully, after

bringing in Alanic to vouch for them and explaining several times that Zach had been given some

kind of mission by the angels that he had forgotten, made her reluctantly agree to their request.

While this was going on, their other preparations continued. The Silent Doorway Adepts had finally

agreed to open a passage to Koth, and Zach and Zorian used it to quickly claim the imperial orb.

They did not establish contact with Daimen for the moment. The original plan was to evacuate

everyone to Koth the moment a gate there was established, but that plan was now looking a lot less

practical than it used to be. Talking everyone into cooperating with their plan while keeping them

ignorant about the time loop was… impractical, to say the least.

Zorian was still a little pissed off that Zach had never tried to stop him when they had been

discussing doing that, even though he knew this was practically suicide on his part. But then again…

the situation was kind of hopeless. How would they ever be able to contain the knowledge of the time

loop when they had no control over Red Robe and he had very little reason to keep things a total

secret? Not to mention the problem of Zorian himself…

Princess was claimed as normal and bound to Zorian. Zach’s situation was deemed too unstable to

have Princess depend on him. They had no idea how the bond with Princess would interact with his

‘mysterious rules’, and whether its presence would make it more complicated to adjust the contract

he had with the angels. Plus, if Zach was compelled to go on a rampage or something, it was best

he didn’t also have a loyal hydra at his disposal as well. His current skills were a headache enough.

Xvim also joined their little group of time loop aware individuals. They had already started talking to

him before Zorian found out about the contract, so it was pointless to back off from him now… plus,

they could really use his help.

Finally, the scheduled day of the summoning had arrived. Zach, Zorian, Alanic, and Xvim came

together to Kylae’s temple, where they were greeted by Batak, the friendly green-haired priest that

Zorian had met so long ago. Even though Zach and Zorian had been kind of rude and impatient

these last few days, the young priest had never lost his temper around them and remained polite

and helpful to the very end. He led them to the interior of the temple, which had been dramatically

rearranged in the preparation for the summoning ritual.

The chairs and furniture had all been shoved to the walls to make space in the center, and a

complicated circular spell formula had been inscribed on the floor in blue paint. Kylae was not the

only priest present inside – eight more lower-ranking attendant priests had been brought in from

elsewhere, and were currently scurrying around the modified main hall, double-checking the spell

formula circle and making last-minute corrections. Additionally, there was a tall, male priest

observing the proceedings with a cool, detached look on his face. His fancy blue robes, decorated in

gold and silver, meant that he was someone pretty high in the Triumvirate Church hierarchy. He

gave them a chilly, unfriendly look when they entered the hall, and then purposely ignored them.

“This is more involved than I thought it would be,” Zorian whispered to Batak.

“Ah-ha… I don’t think you really realize the sort of thing you started,” Batak told him with a quiet,

nervous chuckle. “Even in the Triumvirate Church, it is not every day you get to summon an angel

for a talk. This is a big deal. It’s especially a big deal when someone pulls as many strings as you did

and does it all on such short notice. This has lot of people sitting up and taking notice, I hear.”

Pulling strings? Zorian didn’t remember doing that…

He looked at Alanic, who noticed his look and gave him a small shrug.

“You said it was important,” Alanic said unrepentantly. “I agreed with you.”

They eventually retreated to the side and let Kylae and her fellow priests finish things. The

preparations were lengthy, however, and Zorian couldn’t help but wonder if all of this was really

necessary. There were lots of chanting and arcane rituals being performed, such as burning of

incense and ritualistic bell ringing. Very little of it resembled structured magic as Zorian understood

it. That was interesting because as far as he knew, angels could be summoned through any old

summoning spell; it was just a matter of knowing how to contact them properly and them actually

deigning to answer the summons.

Did all these little rituals count as proper contact procedure or was this just empty tradition that the

Triumvirate Church insisted on following?

He didn’t actually ask that question, though. He had antagonized them enough recently with his

request, and he knew from Alanic that the Triumvirate Church had some very scary resources to call

upon when someone angered them enough. He wasn’t in the time loop anymore.

After what felt like an hour, the actual spellcasting began. Neither Zach nor Zorian had much

experience with summoning spells, as they were useless and impossible to train inside the time

loop, so the whole process was largely a mystery to them. All they saw was the circular spell formula

on the floor lighting up with a soft glow and the air above it rippling like hot summer air.

“We’ve decided to summon a low-ranking angel to start with,” Batak explained to them in a low

voice. He wasn’t involved in the summoning and seemed to have been assigned as their guide and

minder instead. “Even if it cannot help you, it will inform its superiors about the issue and they’ll

decide what to do about it from there.”

“That’s fine,” Zorian said. Low-ranking was fine. Less chance of it completely overpowering them

that way.

“…servant of the Highest Ones, I implore you to grace us with your presence,” Kylae intoned

solemnly. “We, the lowly children of the dust, have a need for your infinite wisdom and guid- urk!”

Uh oh. This doesn’t sound too good…

“What’s happening?” Zach and Batak asked out-loud at the same time.

“The summoning is getting hijacked!” the blue robed priest said in a panicky voice. “I don’t

understand! We performed all the rites correctly! The demons shouldn’t be able to–”

“It’s not the demons,” Kylae said firmly. She was calmer than the blue robed priest, but her voice still

trembled a little. “It’s being hijacked by another angel. Someone high up in the angelic hierarchy has

used their rights of seniority to substitute themselves with the angel we were trying to summon.”

She then winced and stumbled in place. The other priests followed her action soon after, some of

them falling on their knees.

“It’s… it’s too much,” one of the attendant priests gasped. “We can’t supply enough mana for this…”

In the center of the summoning circle, a vague fuzzy outline flickered in and out of existence. Every

summoning spell had to incarnate the spirit being summoned into something. A shell, a vessel that

would allow them exist in and interact with the material world. The more powerful the spirit, the

fancier the vessel had to be to contain them and let them manifest their power… and thus, the more

mana one had to pay to create an ectoplasmic shell suitable for them.

The angel that had substituted itself into their summoning ritual was apparently very mana hungry to

summon.

Before anyone could say anything, Zach pushed Batak aside and stepped up to the summoning

circle. He observed the whole thing for a few seconds and then started pouring his vast mana

reserves into the ritual. He may not have been familiar with summoning magic, but simply supplying

power to the whole thing was not too difficult to figure out.

Zorian, Alanic and Xvim followed his example immediately afterwards. A few seconds later, Batak

woke up from his initial daze and hurriedly joined them in trying to power the summoning.

Zorian’s mana reserves dipped dangerously low almost as soon as he started pouring mana into the

summoning ritual. It wasn’t by choice – the angel on the other side of the ritual was aggressively

pulling on every available mana source to fuel its descent to the material plane. No wonder the

priests had reacted like they did. Having one’s mana reserves forcibly drained in such fashion wasn’t

lethal, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience either.

Finally, after everyone in the room had run dry of mana, the fuzzy ectoplasmic form in the center of

the summoning circle condensed itself into a glowing white ball and then erupted into an explosion of

fire.

A brief moment of panic surged in Zorian’s heart when he realized there was a wall of flames coming

at them and that he was entirely out of mana and practically defenseless. Thankfully, the explosion

of flames suddenly reversed itself before it reached them and collapsed into a writhing ball of fiery

ectoplasm before suddenly sprouting black branches and metallic surfaces.

Eventually the angel’s form stabilized and Zorian finally got his first look at an angel.

It wasn’t human-looking in the slightest. Most old, powerful spirits weren’t, but somehow Zorian didn’t

expect an angel to look so… strange.

The angel was shaped like a black, floating, cross-shaped tree with four sets of branches and no

roots. Or maybe it would be more accurate to imagine four trees that had their lower half cut off and

were then glued together through their trunk into a cross-shaped pattern. The branches were

leafless, and burning orange eyes grew on them instead. The eyes were animated, constantly

moving and taking in everything around the angel. Translucent orange flames enveloped the

branches, coiling around them like a multitude of snakes and releasing crackling sounds reminiscent

of real branches burning in flames.

Floating behind the tree of eyes was a gently spinning ring of silvery metal. The ring was densely

covered in tiny golden characters that Zorian didn’t recognize, and which seemed entirely alien to his

eyes, unlike anything he had ever seen. Behind it, several ghostly ribbons of multicolored light

extended in all directions from the angel, straining Zorian’s eyes and blurring the angel’s form. If one

squinted and tilted their head the right way, they kind of looked like six pairs of wings.

Zorian felt some of the eyes swivel in his direction, and he suddenly felt naked and exposed. It was

as if the angel’s eyes had seen right through him and peered straight into the depths of his soul,

observing, analyzing, judging…

Zorian instinctively took a step back from the angel, and then suddenly realized the entire hall was

unnaturally quiet and still.

Only he, Zach and the angel remained in the hall. Everyone else was just… gone.

Zorian was getting uncomfortable flashbacks to his first meeting with Panaxeth.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel said. Its voice was booming, and resonated painfully in Zorian’s ears

and chest. “I have come to help.”

“What… where is everyone?” Zach asked in confusion.

“They should not hear this,” the angel responded.

“So you just… shunted us off to some private space?” Zach frowned. “Also, can’t you talk a little

more quietly?”

“My time here is limited,” the angel cautioned. It made no attempt to lower its voice for them. It was

still uncomfortably loud and resonant, and Zorian thought he could faintly hear additional voices

repeating its words whenever it spoke. “You must not waste time.”

Zorian supposed the angel had a point there. Even though it had taken all their mana, a spirit of this

level probably couldn’t stay manifested on the material plane for very long. They had to make the

most of it.

“Did Zach enter into a contract with you?” Zorian asked.

“Yes,” the angel immediately confirmed.

Zorian waited for a second, but the angel seemed disinclined to clarify more than that.

Ugh.

“My enemies made me completely forget about that,” Zach said with a frown.

“They did not,” the angel countered.

Zach made a strange face.

“Yes they did,” he said, laughing in a frustrated manner. “Why would I lie about it to you of all

people?”

“They did not make you forget because you never even knew you had made a contract with

us,” the angel said. “If they do know that you have made a contract with us, it is because they have

guessed correctly.”

“Zach… never knew he’d made a contract with you?” Zorian asked incredulously. “How would that

work?”

“We went through a great deal of effort to mask our involvement,” the angel said. “Our current

interference… is already overstepping certain boundaries that we would rather not cross. It

would have been best for everyone if nobody had realized we had a hand in this.”

“But how would I make a contract with you without realizing it?” Zach insisted. “That doesn’t make

any sense!”

“We contacted you through a dream,” the angel told him. “You had no idea who was making the

offer when you accepted the contract.”

Zach’s face went through several different expressions as he processed that.

Zorian just buried his face into his palms and took a deep breath.

Zach…

“That’s… that’s slander!” Zach protested. “I’d never do something stupid like that! Even I know it’s

dumb as hell to accept spiritual contracts from mysterious people that contact you in your dreams!”

“You being foolish enough to take the offer was one of the reasons we chose you as our

champion,” the angel told him bluntly.

“Well, uh…” Zach fumbled. “You know what? Forget it. Even if what you say is true, I still ended up

mind wiped of critical information inside the time loop. I didn’t even know how to return to the real

world! You included so many things in this… contract I made with you, so why didn’t you include

some basic information like that in there as well?”

“We did,” the angel responded. “You simply never satisfied the conditions necessary to access the

information.”

What?

“What?” demanded Zach. “What do you mean by that?”

“You had a goal, did you not?” the angel challenged. “You had to stop the invasion without

informing anyone about the time loop. Had you ever succeeded at that, the contract would have

given you information about the time loop and how to leave it.”

“You never explained to him how the time loop worked to begin with,” Zorian realized. “Giving him

the exit method right from the start would mean he could leave at any point he wished, even before

he was capable of stopping Panaxeth’s release the way you wanted him to.”

“The hearts of men are weak and fall easily to temptation,” the angel confirmed. “If he could not

handle the relentless weathering of time and become the savior we need, it would have been

better for him to never emerge from the Sovereign Gate at all.”

“You…” Zach began.

“You chose this,” the angel reminded him, completely unrepentant. “And with that in mind, I would

like an explanation. What happened in there?”

“You don’t know?” Zorian asked curiously.

“Would I be asking if I did?” the angel asked rhetorically. “The inner workings of the Sovereign

Gate are opaque to us. Much like the Black Rooms you are familiar with, the Sovereign Gate is

completely isolated from the rest of the world once activated. We have inferred some things, but

we would like an unambiguous answer.”

Zach and Zorian gave the angel a quick summary of what had occurred inside the time loop, taking

pains to emphasize Panaxeth’s interference with the normal operation of the time loop and how Red

Robe’s and Silverlake’s presence in the real world made the entire task of stopping the invasion very

difficult. Finally, they explained Zorian’s situation and how his presence made the idea of eliminating

all knowledge of the time loop outside of Zach basically impossible.

“A disappointing result,” the angel concluded. “The task we gave you was not that difficult. Why

did you allow things to get so complicated?”

“Not that difficult!?” Zach repeated incredulously. “Do you know how difficult it is to stop an army on

your lonesome, without being able to explain to people where your skills come from or how you

know things?”

“Even though we initiated the Sovereign Gate prematurely, you still had hundreds of chances to

get things right,” the angel said. “I suspect you have a skewed perspective on the difficulty of the

problem. In the original scenario, you would have been tackling an unaware force oblivious to

your shifting schemes. Even with our restrictions, it should not have been difficult to figure out a

solution when you have infinite attempts and your enemy never learns from your mistakes.

Instead, you have been competing against a rival time looper. Regardless of how it happened,

that is your own failing. Not ours.”

Zach looked like he was about to start yelling at the angel, but eventually restrained himself. He

scoffed disdainfully at the spirit, and then folded his hands over his chest in silence.

They didn’t actually know how Red Robe got included as a time looper, so it was difficult to counter

the angel’s claims there.

“So you deliberately activated the Sovereign Gate a month before the invasion,” Zorian noted. “You

could tell what was going to happen a month in advance?”

“The future is hazy and constantly changing, but some things are more certain than others,” the

angel said. “Unless something was done, Panaxeth’s release was practically set in stone.”

“Why not just inform the Triumvirate Church and let them handle it?” Zorian asked.

“Strange as this may sound to you, that would have been far worse than what we ended up

doing,” the angel responded. “We are not supposed to meddle in mortal conflicts.”

“Why me?” Zach suddenly asked. “If you have such an accurate way of predicting the future, surely

you knew I wasn’t a good choice.”

“On the contrary,” the angel disagreed. “You were the best choice. That is why we settled on you

in the end.”

“Best how?” Zach asked suspiciously.

“It is a secret,” the angel responded. “There were considerable restrictions in regards to

candidates. They had to begin the month in Cyoria. They needed to have a certain potential and

mentality. They needed to have considerable freedom of movement and association. They

needed to satisfy the ethical guidelines. And so much more. I cannot tell you the details.”

“If Zorian began the month in Cyoria, would he also be a candidate?” Zach asked.

Zorian gave him a strange look. Why would he ask that?

“Heavens no,” the angel said. “He fails just about every criterion, especially in regards to

mentality. I am surprised he was even willing to risk his life in this manner, based on his

previous actions and attitudes.”

Annoyingly, Zach seemed really pleased to hear that response.

Zorian folded his arms over his chest in dissatisfaction. Jerks, the both of them.

“What is my status at the moment, then?” Zorian asked. “I defied the laws of the time loop and got

out into the real world, but I notice you are not making a move against me. Are you fine with my

presence, then?”

The angel’s burning eyes focused on him more closely, studying him in great detail for a couple of

seconds. Zorian squirmed uncomfortably under its gaze, but stood his ground and stubbornly kept

staring back at the angel without flinching.

“You are a forbidden existence, and you have committed grave sins to be where you are right

now,” the angel judged. “However, we are not without mercy and understanding. So long as the

primordial’s release is stopped in the end, we are willing to overlook some things.”

“So… I’m safe from your wrath?” Zorian summarized.

“If the primordial remains chained by the end of the month,” the angel stressed. “If not, then we

will be forced to directly intervene in the material world. At that point, it costs us nothing to be

extra thorough and eliminate all possible complications. You understand, yes?”

“Of course,” Zorian confirmed.

Even though he had made no contract with the angels, his life also depended on the outcome of the

invasion. If he and Zach failed to stop Red Robe and Silverlake from releasing Panaxeth, the angels

would take care of him all the same.

“If you’re fine with Zorian, does that mean that my contract can be renegotiated now?” Zach asked

hopefully. “Because the way things are now…”

“We cannot renegotiate the contract,” the angel said. “It simply cannot be done.”

“But you’re the one who made it,” Zach protested. “Why wouldn’t you be able to change it?”

“It is divine magic,” the angel pointed out. “We obviously didn’t make it.”

Of course. No one could cast divine magic in the current age, not even the angels. Only the gods

themselves were capable of that. Everyone else, including their spiritual servants, were just tapping

into artifacts and resources left behind when the gods went silent.

“How about just removing it?” Zorian tried.

“Also not possible,” the angel responded. “It is deliberately designed to be next to impossible to

remove once placed. I am afraid there is nothing we can do about it.”

“But the way things are going, I’ll die at the end of the month, even if I stop the primordial from

getting out,” Zach pointed out. “Isn’t that just a little unfair? It’s obvious the situation has changed

from the time I agreed to the contract… and even you admitted the way you got me to agree to it

was kind of dodgy and inappropriate.”

“We cannot absolve you of fulfilling your part of the bargain,” the angel stubbornly said. “It simply

is not within our power to do so. The only thing I can promise you is that if you find the way to

remove or evade the contract in some fashion, we will not seek to punish you for it.”

Zach’s eyes widened at the statement.

“You will not seek to… you’re saying if I found a way to trick the contract on my own, you would have

gone after me for it?” he asked incredulously.

“We are not the primordials,” the angel told him. “Though our actions are restricted, we are far

from powerless in regards to the material world. Even if you could trick the spell left by the gods,

it would do you no good if we were also not willing to look the other way and accept this

outcome. You made a solemn pact with us, and we have done our side of the bargain. We have

every right to be harsh and demand that you fulfill your obligation to the letter… but as I said to

your friend, we are not without mercy and understanding. So long as the primordial’s release is

stopped in the end, we are willing to overlook some things.”

“So I still have to do the impossible,” complained Zach. “It’s just that, if I succeed at that, you won’t

come after me in response.”

“You can view it that way, I suppose,” the angel responded. The spirit froze for a moment, its eyes

staring off somewhere into the distance, as if listening to some distant words that neither Zach nor

Zorian could hear. “My time here grows short. If you have anything else you need of me, say it

quickly.”

“Give me the actual contents of the contract Zach signed with you,” Zorian demanded. “Zach can’t

tell me what it says and I need to know.”

For a while, the angel said nothing. Then, its branches swayed on unseen winds for a few seconds,

and a ray of burning orange light erupted without warning and struck Zach in the chest. Rather than

harming him, however, the ray harmlessly sank into his chest and was absorbed without a trace.

Before either Zach or Zorian could ask what the hell that was about, a series of burning letters

started materializing in the air in front of Zach.

And kept going…

…and going…

…and going.

Pages and pages of text, going on and on and on about what was expected of Zach. Zorian

expected the contract to be a couple of concise sentences, since that was what a geas spell would

look like… but apparently he was wrong. The contract instead consisted of a massive legal

document, complete with that peculiar legal word choice that made official documents hard to

understand even if you speak the language.

It was good that he could flawlessly memorize everything he could see, because there was no way

he could understand this thing without a few hours to pore over it. And possibly some actual legal

help.

“For heaven’s sake, Zach…” Zorian sighed. “How the hell could you agree to this? There is no way

you actually read all this and understood its implications.”

“I don’t remember any of it!” Zach protested. “It was my stupid younger self, okay? Gods

know your younger self was just as stupid in his own way!”

Well, he got him there… but still. This was something else.

“He did not actually read the contract,” the angel added in helpfully. “Still, we had summarized the

relevant parts to him. He has to stop the invasion of Cyoria from achieving its goal or he will die

at the end of the month. He cannot let anyone know about the existence of the time loop or he’ll

die at the end of the month. He cannot kill a ruler of any nation, or otherwise directly cause a

nation to collapse into anarchy or he’ll die at the end of the month. Restrictions were placed on

what kind of mind and soul magic he can learn, because the ethical committee would not approve

the project otherwise. He is also completely forbidden from talking about the specifics of the

contract he signed. Anyone who forcibly sees the contents of the contract, such as through a deep

memory scan, must be neutralized in whatever manner is practical. Finally, the contract is

completely dissolved at the end of the month, allowing him to live life freely from that point

afterwards.”

“Can you tell me how you defined ‘knows about the time loop’?” Zorian asked.

“It is all in the contract,” the angel responded, one of its branches casually waving towards Zach. “I

know you memorized it.”

The angel once again stilled for a moment, seemingly listening to something in the distance.

“I must go,” it said. “You have one more question.”

“If the primordial becomes free, is it the end of the world as we know it?” Zach immediately asked,

giving no chance for Zorian to think about this last chance to question the spirit.

“Probably not,” the angel admitted. “Nevertheless, you still would not want this to happen… and

not just because of the dire consequences for you personally. The Highest Ones had placed a

great many… triggers… into the core that governs this world. If conditions satisfying a trigger are

detected, automatic countermeasures are initiated. A primordial gaining access to the material

plane would activate several of them. You do not want that to happen. No one wants that to

happen. Much of our duties involve making sure none of the triggers can be activated, for the

sake of both the spirit world and the material one. Most of the triggers look out for things the

Highest Ones had considered existential threats… and they had a very ‘scorched earth’ policy

when dealing with existential threats.”

Having said that, the angel suddenly swooped down towards the ground, and one of its branches

lightly reached towards the stone floor beneath them. Even though its branches looked thin and

fragile, they scooped out a chunk of stone from the floor like it was nothing but wet clay… and then

started shaping it just as easily.

Black branches twisted and tapped the stone like hundreds of tiny fingers, chipping off pieces in a

flurry of rapid movement. In less than three seconds, the chunk of rock became a smooth, glossy

cube that was then thrust directly into Zorian’s hands.

It was the weirdest thing, because it didn’t look like magic – instead it looked as if the angel

physically shaped the chunk of stone through a combination of inhuman strength, speed, and

precision.

“Take this,” the angel said. “Use it to summon me for the final battle.”

“How do you know there will be a final battle?” asked Zorian.

“The future is hazy and constantly changing, but some things are more certain than others,” the

angel said, echoing one of its earlier statements.

And then it was gone, and the temple hall was once again loud and full of people. Alanic, Xvim,

Batak, Kylae, and the other priests quickly surrounded them, demanding to know what had occurred.

From their perspective they just suddenly disappeared for a while and now they are mysterious

back.

Zach and Zorian ignored them for a moment, focusing on the cube in Zorian’s hands.

It wasn’t as smooth as Zorian originally thought it was. It was densely covered with strange writing;

the same kind of writing that covered the silver ring that floated behind the angel. There was nothing

obviously magical about it, but the cube had a strange sheen to it when the light hit it just right and

the characters did seem to have some kind of pattern to them…

In the end he carefully pocketed the cube and put it out of his mind for the moment. Before he dived

into the specifics of Zach’s contract and studied the cube, they had one more meeting to go through.

Red Robe had invited them for a talk…

- break -

As Red Robe had noted in his brief letter to them, Zach and Zorian already knew how to contact him

with information about the meeting. Their simulacrums clashed all the time, and it was no problem to

just throw a letter on the ground during one of those confrontations and then just walk away.

Using that method, Zach and Zorian eventually arranged for a meeting with Red Robe on the roof of

one of the academy buildings. It was a sufficiently public location that neither side could really

prepare a trap for the other there. Plus, the academy wards were actually pretty good now that Zach

and Zorian covertly talked them into changing their ward keys. Even Zach and Zorian had to be a

little careful around them, since the new security voided their knowledge as much as it did Red

Robe’s.

The meeting was arranged at midnight, and everyone arrived exactly on time. One side consisted of

Zach, Zorian, Xvim, and Alanic. The other had Red Robe, Silverlake, and Quatach-Ichl.

Red Robe was wearing his usual red robe as a disguise, his face hidden in a patch of darkness

behind the hood. Silverlake was as Zorian last saw her – a young, attractive woman wearing a form-

fitting dress. She seemed very happy and pleased with herself, grinning from ear to ear as she

looked at them… a fact that made Zach obviously fume at her. It just made her grin wider.

And then there was Quatach-Ichl. He was not in his skeletal form for this meeting, opting to come in

his human guise instead. He looked calm, composed, and confident. He greeted them politely with a

small bow before turning silent and just observing things.

Zorian sighed inwardly. He knew it was a futile dream, but he had been hoping Red Robe and

Silverlake hadn’t initiated the old lich into their deep secrets. This made everything so much

harder…

“Ha ha!” Silverlake cackled. “See, I told you they would bring those two with them and none other.

Pay up!”

“We never actually agreed to any bets,” Red Robe protested.

“Bah! You’re supposed to play along for appearances’ sake!” Silverlake said, scowling at him.

“Whatever. Zorian, did you reconsider my offer? It still stands, you know?”

“Shut up,” Red Robe snapped at her. “Everyone, I’d like to apologize for her actions recently. I know

you probably think I sent her to sow dissent into your group, but that was entirely her own idea. She

seems to think there is a genuine chance of convincing mister Kazinski to join us in freeing the

primordial, but we all know that is just a fantasy.”

Yeah, as if Zorian was going to believe that. He fully believed that Silverlake being there was an

attempt to make Zorian and Zach fight amongst each other. He also suspected it was an attempt by

Red Robe and Silverlake to reduce the number of enemies lined up against them, since Zorian was

far less likely to keep telling people about the time loop if he knew that would get Zach killed. Which

was what ended up happening in the end.

One thing he didn’t believe for a moment was the idea that Silverlake actually made an honest offer

for him to join her. Her natural instinct was to exploit others, not work with them.

“As if your plan is any better,” Silverlake complained. “Why do you think–”

“I thought we agreed I’ll be doing the talking?” Red Robe protested with a sigh.

Silverlake clacked her tongue dismissively and then conjured herself a chair to sit on.

Quatach-Ichl did not react at all to his companion’s antics, opting to study Zorian and his group

instead.

A short and very uncomfortably silence descended on the scene. Everyone involved was tense and

seemed to be ready to attack at a moment’s notice. Even Silverlake, who was sitting on a conjured

chair and tried to give off an impression of being bored and inattentive, was clearly twitching

whenever someone made an unexpected move.

“What is this all about?” Zach finally asked. “You’re the one who invited us here, so why are you

silent all of a sudden? Don’t waste our time.”

“Ah… even after all this time, you still haven’t changed. Still so impatient…” Red Robe said softly, as

if reminiscing about something.

Zach frowned at him, clearly considering the merits of just starting a battle here and now.

“I see you came here unmasked,” Red Robe commented.

“You already know who we are,” Zach shrugged. “Is there any point in hiding our faces?”

“True,” Red Robe nodded. “Well, I guess there’s no point in hiding my identity any longer, either.”

He pulled his hood down, and the patch of darkness that hid his face suddenly disappeared.

It was Veyers. The same face, the same blonde hair, the same orange, slitted eyes. The main

difference was that his hair was well-groomed, his eyes lacked some of that ferocity and violence he

had seen in Veyers recently, and his entire attitude was calm and more assured.

“I’m guessing this isn’t much of a surprise to you,” Red Robe said. Without the voice masking spells

embedded into the hood of his robe, even his voice was recognizably that of Veyers. Just calmer

and quieter. “Still, I hope you take this gesture of good will as just that. I’m not the monster you think

I am, and I really think we can come to a sort of agreement here.”

Zorian studied the boy in front of him for a few seconds before shaking his head.

“You say it’s a gesture of good will and you show us a fake face and identity,” Zorian told him. “How

do you expect us to agree to anything when you opened the talks with such a brazen deception?”

Veyers looked honestly taken aback at the accusation.

“You’re overthinking things,” Silverlake said, rolling her eyes at him. “It’s really him. Who else could it

be, really?”

“No, he’s not Veyers,” Zorian insisted. “It never made sense and still doesn’t.”

Zach sent Zorian an almost imperceptible frown. He clearly didn’t understand why Zorian was so

certain, but didn’t want to call him on it.

Zorian didn’t blame him. He had long had his suspicions, but it was only when he saw the true form

of Zach’s angelic contract that he became completely certain…

“Are you asking me to prove that I’m Veyers?” Red Robe said with an amused laugh. “What would

even satisfy you?”

“Every student has to give their mana signature to the academy for identification purposes,” Xvim

suddenly said, reaching into his jacket pocket and retrieving an inconspicuous looking ball out of it.

He displayed it for everyone to see. “Proving whether or not you’re Veyers… should be an extremely

simple matter.”

Red Robe stared at the ball for a few seconds before bursting into short, barking laughter.

“Oh hell…” he said, chuckling to himself. “I can’t believe I overlooked something as simple as that…”

Silverlake gave him a shocked look.

“Feeling dumb, now?” Red Robe said, giving her a contemptuous look. “You spent all these days

interacting with me and never suspected a thing, but mister Kazinski here saw through it

immediately. Maybe you should have asked to join him instead.”

He then ignored her and turned to face Zorian fully.

“I guess you also know who I really am?” he asked, tilting his head to the side with a self-indulgent

smile.

“You’re Jornak, Veyers’s lawyer friend,” Zorian said. “I’m guessing Veyers introduced you to Zach,

and you hit it off with each other since you have both been cheated out of your inheritance and

empathized with each other because of it. He didn’t realize you have ties to the Esoteric Order of the

Celestial Dragon until it was too late.”

“The Cult of the Dragon is nothing to me,” Red Robe said. He still continued wearing Veyers’s face.

“I was never seriously loyal to them, even before the time loop.”

“So why…” Zach asked him, looking at him with confused eyes. “If Zorian could trick the time loop

into letting him leave, then you–”

“You don’t understand,” Red Robe said, shaking his head sadly. “You just wouldn’t understand, no

matter how I tried to convince you. This knowledge… this power… it’s just begging to be used.

Shutur-Tarana changed the world entirely when he left the time loop. Why can’t I? Why couldn’t we?”

Zach seemed taken aback at the question.

“Have you two ever tried to look into what our country has been doing these past few years?” Red

Robe said, looking at Zorian. “I just wanted to figure out how to ensure justice for me and Zach at

first. However, I couldn’t stop myself from looking… and the more I looked, the more awful things I

found. The prosperity we enjoy right now is all built atop of a mountain of lies, theft, unspeakable

corruption and even straight up murder. Even if I got justice for myself and Zach, it’s all just a drop in

the bucket.”

“The other countries are no better,” Alanic pointed out.

“Yes! Yes, I know that!” Red Robe said, agreeing vigorously. “I’ve looked into them as well, and it

was just as disgusting. And… even if one wanted to shut their eyes and ignore all the violations, the

current state of peace is just a fragile illusion. Another round of Splinter Wars will occur soon, with all

the pain and suffering that entails. Something had to be done. I had to do something. But Zach

wouldn’t hear any of it. He just wanted to stop the invasion, get the money his caretaker had taken

from him and look away from the ugliness of the world. We had this incredible opportunity to change

things for the better, and he was fine letting it slip through his fingers.”

“I hate to break it to you, but you’re trying to raze an entire city of half a million people to the ground

and feed their souls to a wraith creation machine,” Zach told him. “If that’s your vision of ‘changing

things for the better’, I’m not surprised my forgotten self would have none of it.”

“Things wouldn’t have been so drastic if you had agreed to work with me on this,” Red Robe said.

“Though yes, some unpleasantness would still have to get done. Things have to get worse before

they get better.”

There was a short pause as everyone processed Red Robe’s… Jornak’s statements. Jornak

decided to take this chance to drop his disguise and assume his real form. He took a deep breath

and then suddenly became taller, his facial structure shifting and changing. A few seconds later,

Veyers was gone – in his place was a perfect copy of Jornak as Zorian remembered him…

…except that there was a spark of intensity in this Jornak’s eyes which simply hadn’t existed in him

the last time they had spoken. The Jornak that Zorian had known was a nervous, risk-averse man

that harbored no desire to change the world or enact some grand scheme. Zorian knew this because

he had read his thoughts and memories several times, and had seen nothing particularly suspicious

about them.

Then again, wasn’t Zorian the same? This was just one more proof that the time loop was capable of

radically changing a person. For better or for worse.

Of course, this could all just be another disguise… but Zorian rather doubted it. He was pretty sure

Red Robe really was Jornak. That’s why Veyers had to be soul killed in the time loop and erased out

of Zach’s mind… because Veyers would know if Jornak was acting inconsistently from restart to

restart, and Veyers always crashed their first classes of the year and could thus interact with Zach at

any time. If Zach regularly spoke to Veyers over the course of many restarts, the other boy would

surely mention how his best friend Jornak was missing from his house or doing strange things that

differed radically from restart to restart. In order for Jornak to drop off Zach’s perception, Veyers had

to go away.

“You know what? Why don’t you just tell us why you invited us here?” Zach suddenly told Jornak.

“Surely it isn’t to get us to join you, right?”

“No, I know this is impossible,” Jornak said. “In the end, neither of you are willing to dirty your hands

with this, even if doing so would prevent far more suffering in the end. No, I invited you here to

arrange for a truce.”

“A truce?” Zorian asked incredulously.

“Yes. I want us to stop fighting until the day of the summer festival,” Jornak clarified. “We’ll decide a

winner and loser among us in one massive battle at the end of the month, just like it was always

meant to be. In the meantime, you’ll stop making raids on our forces and we’ll make no moves

against you.”

“That seems like a deal that completely favors you,” Zorian pointed out. “Why would we shoot

ourselves in the foot by agreeing to this?”

Jornak smiled at the question and took out a brown stone with a crudely carved flame symbol on it. It

didn’t seem magical in the slightest and Zorian did not recognize it, but Zach immediately paled upon

sighting it.

“Because I have wraith bombs scattered throughout the major cities on the continent, ready to

activate at my command. Because I know exactly who to assassinate and how in order to

immediately trigger a new continental war. And,” he shook his stone token as he said this, “because

I got Oganj and his group to work with me. Your choice.”

Chapter 097

Illusory

Standing on the roof of one of the academy buildings, the two groups stared at one another without

speaking. The situation had already been tense, and Jornak’s threats only made it more uneasy and

unstable. Zorian suspected that if one of them made a single suspicious move, the other side would

attack and the whole meeting would instantly degenerate into violence.

Probably the only reason that hadn’t happened thus far was that both sides realized they couldn’t

meaningfully hurt the other. They had picked this place for a reason. It was too exposed, too close to

powerful mages standing watch, and too heavily protected by a warding scheme that neither side

was keyed in on. If a battle were to start, it would be hard to deal a finishing blow and decide

anything. Even if one side gained the upper hand in the fighting, there was no way for them to keep

their opponents from simply running away. They would just be revealing their trump cards and

making outside observers even more aware of the secret war being waged all around them.

Zorian watched the stone token in Jornak’s hand while considering his threats in his head.

The wraith bombs were kind of expected, though Zorian did not really think they would be using

them outside of Cyoria. He thought they were intended to be used as support for the invasion itself,

not as a way to blackmail them into a truce. As for the threat of an assassination campaign that

could start another war… well, Zorian wasn’t sure he entirely believed that. How would Jornak

actually test this? Zach never mentioned any sudden wars erupting in the time loop, and he surely

would have if he witnessed any. In Zorian’s opinion, Jornak was just making an educated guess,

based on the various information he gathered in the time loop, and it was an open question what

would really happen if he were to kill a bunch of really important people in quick succession.

Then again, during that fateful incident where Quatach-Ichl tried to mutilate Zach’s soul and brought

Zorian into the time loop, Zach ended up in a coma for quite a few restarts… and it was very likely

that Zorian spent a number of restarts in a similar state as well. Perhaps it was during some of these

‘lost restarts’ that Jornak tested such large-scale schemes for viability…

And then there was Oganj – the infamous dragon mage that had killed an entire army and one of the

Immortal Eleven sent to deal with him, the terrifying dragon that had menaced northern Altazia for

centuries now. Zorian was a little mystified why Jornak was invoking his name so smugly. Sure,

Oganj was an immensely powerful opponent, even by dragon standards… but hadn’t Zach already

killed him once? He distinctly remembered Zach going through a great number of short restarts in

order to–

Hmm.

He glanced at Zach again. His friend did not seem as calm about Oganj’s involvement as Zorian

thought he would be.

[What am I missing here?] Zorian asked Zach, sending him a telepathic message. [Didn’t you

already prove you can best Oganj?]

[I’m not even sure I could repeat that feat inside the time loop, let alone here in the outside world,]

Zach immediately sent back.

[Are you saying you winning was a fluke?] Zorian asked, surprised.

[It wasn’t a fluke,] Zach responded, sounding faintly outraged in his thoughts. [I beat Oganj fair and

square. However, I kind of brute forced things and took advantage of the fact I could learn from our

fights and Oganj couldn’t. Unless I caught him off-guard, unless I timed things just right, unless I

knew what spells he usually uses and counters my moves with… I’m not sure I could beat him in a

straight fight.]

Huh… Zorian did not often hear this kind of admission from Zach. If there was anything that Zach

was good at, it was a straight fight. Then again, his main advantage – his massive mana reserves –

was not as big of a deal against a dragon as it was against human mages. All dragons had

impossibly huge mana reserves by human standards.

[Is Oganj more powerful than Quatach-Ichl?] Zorian asked.

[Not even close,] Zach said immediately. [He doesn’t have the huge variety of spells that Quatach-

Ichl does, his body is too large to teleport around easily, and if you kill his body, he will actually die.

The old bag of bones is still the toughest opponent I ever faced. Still, Oganj is incredibly powerful.

Even worse… he has students.]

[Students?] Zorian asked curiously. [As in, dragon ones?]

[What else?] Zach responded. [Even though dragons are usually solitary, dragon mages had to find

a way to pass on their skills to a new generation. Otherwise, their traditions would never spread and

would eventually die out. For that reason, all dragon mages occasionally take a young dragon as a

student to pass on their teachings. Usually a dragon mage will only have one student at any

particular time, but Oganj is more powerful and confident than most dragon mages. He currently has

two students.]

Crap…

[Three dragon mages…] he lamented. [Even if the two students were mere beginners, this is still bad

news.]

Three dragons working together was already a cause for panic for most people – having them all be

dragon mages as well made a terrifying group that would give even Zach and Zorian pause.

“Are you done talking to each other?” Jornak suddenly asked. “Just so you know, when I say I can

get Oganj and his group to work with me, I don’t just mean his two students. You see, Oganj has

been making connections with other dragon mages, and even regular dragons. You may not know

this, but human-dragon relations have been steadily becoming worse lately, what with Eldemar and

other northern countries constantly pushing deeper into the wilderness with their colonists. As

solitary as they are, dragons are still intelligent beings and they can see where this is going. Some of

them have been wondering if they should temporarily band together to halt or at least divert human

advances, and Oganj is something of a logical figure to rally around in that case. If he moves against

Eldemar, there could be as many as 20, or even 30 dragons following behind him.”

Zorian couldn’t help but twitch at the explanation. His first instinct was to dismiss Jornak’s claims as

pure fiction, but… there were precedents for large-scale dragon attacks happening. Usually when

humans attacked dragon nesting grounds or killed too many dragons in too short of a time, but still.

And 30 dragons? That would take an entire army to stop… except that an army was a lot less mobile

than a group of 30 dragons, which meant Oganj’s group could advance practically unchallenged

through Eldemar’s territory, laying waste to all they encountered and simply fleeing whenever they

were confronted with a force big enough to deal real damage. It would take an entire group of ultra-

powerful mages to counter such a flight of dragons, and assembling such a group would take

months. If Eldemar was simultaneously suffering from assassinations of its prominent leaders and

the entire continent was teetering on the brink of another war… it was questionable whether it would

be assembled at all.

It was interesting, though. Some dragons had friendly relations with humans, but Oganj wasn’t one

of them. Considering his antagonistic past with humanity, it couldn’t have been easy to convince him

to work with Jornak. Still, Zach was adamant that the stone token in Jornak’s hands was Oganj’s

calling card and was genuine. That meant he probably did reach some kind of agreement with the

old dragon mage.

It was becoming apparent that, while Zach and Zorian had largely focused on accumulation of

personal power and skills, Jornak had spent most of his time trying to investigate the various states

and organizations in their surroundings in order to figure out how to manipulate them. Probably a

smart decision, considering he wanted to enact some kind of grand change in the entire continent

and possibly create his own version of the Ikosian Empire with him on top. Personal power alone

couldn’t do that.

Thinking on it some more, it was likely that Jornak’s focus on recruiting others to help him originated

from pure necessity. If he had started off as a temporary looper, like Zorian suspected, it made

sense that he was focused on trying to leverage people around him to accomplish his goals. He was

not a master mage, and he’d had a limited amount of time to work with, so slowly training to become

good enough to accomplish things himself had not been a possible option.

“You know, nothing you said really addresses my question from earlier,” Zorian pointed out to

Jornak. “Delaying the conflict until the summer festival does not benefit us in any way. You and

Silverlake will die if you can’t release the primordial before the deadline, and you can only make an

attempt on the day of the summer festival. So it makes sense that you want to postpone the conflict

until then. However, Zach and me have every reason to push things and try to resolve things sooner.

Nothing you said changes that. In the end, all you did was name a bunch of threats and try to

blackmail us into agreeing to a terrible deal.”

“Yes, that’s entirely true,” Jornak said calmly, nodding slightly at him in agreement. “The truth is I

don’t think I can keep the conflict manageable at the rate it is going. It’s only been a few days, but

we’re already raising red flags everywhere. At this rate, we’re going to end up dragging the

Eldemarian government into it whether we want to or not. Not even the local mage guild, subverted

as it is, can fully suppress what is happening. And if that happens, then the release of the primordial

becomes all but impossible to pull off.”

“You’re losing the fight and getting desperate,” Zach said.

“I wouldn’t phrase it that way,” Jornak said carefully. “But it is definitely true that I, and Silverlake

here, are not in a good position. We made a deal with the primordial to release it or die, and we can’t

weasel out of it. If we can’t release Panaxeth from his prison by the end of the month, everything

else will become pointless. However, should everything really fall apart that severely, why wouldn’t I

drag you all down along with me? If you drive me into a corner like that, I will obviously turn to

destructive and extreme methods.”

“Zorian is right. This is just brazen blackmail,” Zach said flatly, frowning at the man in front of him.

“I’m just explaining my logic,” Jornak said. “I think it makes perfect sense for me to escalate things if

we continue down this path. In the current situation, Eldemar can do as they wish and focus on

sorting out the situation in Cyoria at their leisure. Meanwhile, if I kick off another Splinter War,

release hundreds of wraiths in all major cities, and get a group of dragons to lay waste to the entirety

of northern Eldemar… well, it just might give them more pressing matters to worry about. And a

narrow chance to live is better than having no chance at all. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Zach and Zorian said nothing to that.

“See, I think you’re reasonable people,” Jornak continued, undaunted by their silence and frosty

glares. If anything, he grew more animated in his speech and mannerisms. “You didn’t immediately

run off to inform the Crown about what is happening. You spared the life of Veyers, even though he

was clearly connected to me in some way. You came to this meeting to see what I have to say.

Therefore, I think you’re going to be reasonable about this. After all, even if you agree to this truce,

you still have a high chance of stopping us in the end. Letting us delay the battle until the end of the

month may be a little suboptimal for you, but it’s not a catastrophe. If you push me too far, we both

lose.”

“If the sides were reversed, would you take your own deal?” Xvim suddenly asked, interrupting his

explanation.

Jornak hesitated for a moment, mouth open, before his mouth snapped shut and he shook his head.

“Not a chance,” he admitted.

Silverlake laughed at the admission, a sharp cackling laughter that somehow looked more

appropriate on her old withered form than on her current young one.

“Then how can you call it being reasonable?” Xvim probed further.

“Because you are not me,” Jornak said. “I wouldn’t accept it because I wouldn’t care about the death

and destruction, so long as I win in the end. I accepted this as a price for what I want to do a long

time ago. You four? I’m guessing you are far more reluctant to make that sacrifice.”

He was… probably right about that. If it were just Zorian and Xvim making decisions, maybe they

would have decided to cold-heartedly ignore the threats and continue pressuring Jornak and his

group. Maybe. However, there was no way either Alanic or Zach would be fine with that. Especially

Alanic, since he clearly cared a lot about Eldemar – not just the people, but the country itself, as

well.

For a while the scene was quiet, as Zorian and the rest of his group discussed the situation in front

of them via telepathy. Jornak and his group were probably discussing something through magical

means too, considering their body language and brief looks, though Zorian did not really know if they

were using telepathy or something else.

Probably something else, as all three were under the mind blank spell.

It was a good thing they had decided not to bring Spear of Resolve with them, he mused. Her

telepathic prowess would have been largely useless against the people in front of them and her skills

at other forms of magic were relatively humble. She couldn’t teleport away, or even just fly off into

the distance. If a fight were to break out, she would have been a rock around their neck – unable to

contribute to the battle, incapable of quickly retreating, yet important enough that Jornak and

Quatach-Ichl would definitely want to see her dead.

No, it was best she stayed safe in the depths of her web for now.

“If we agree to this, how can we be sure you won’t be here tomorrow to demand further concessions

in exchange for not wrecking everything?” Zach finally asked.

“As we have already established, this truce is more in our favor than yours. Why would I risk things

like that?” Jornak asked with a raised eyebrow. “In my opinion, I’m the one who should be worried.

You have every incentive to agree to the truce and then dishonor it later. How can I be sure you

won’t just take advantage of the truce to build up your forces and dishonor it a few days later? I

can’t. All I can do is immediately make good of my threats in response.”

Zorian clacked his tongue at the explanation. So this truce was basically toothless and could fall

apart at any moment if one side pushed more than the other could tolerate. And there would

definitely be plenty of pushing and testing of waters, that much was clear – if any side saw a chance

to gain an advantage by dishonoring the deal, they would do so in a heartbeat.

”Threats, threats, and more threats. Just so you know, if you come later to demand more from us, I

will immediately attack you, consequences be damned,” Zach told him darkly.

“Does that mean we have an agreement?” Jornak said with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Ha ha! Of course they’re going to agree,” Silverlake suddenly piped in, jumping up from her

conjured chair and stretching in an exaggerated manner. She ignored Jornak’s annoyed look and

stepped forward with a grin. “They’re all too touchy-feely to risk such devastation just to stop us a

little earlier… but more importantly, they recently found out that Zach will have issues surviving this

month. It sure would be nice if they could take a step back from all the fighting in order to figure out

what to do about that…”

The atmosphere immediately got even more tense and gloomy. Zorian had always known that

Silverlake wouldn’t have informed him about Zach’s contract purely on a whim, and now it seemed

like one of the big reasons for it was to put pressure on them to agree to this truce. It was as

Silverlake said – they needed time and resources to figure out what could be done about this, and it

would be hard to focus on this if they were constantly fighting their enemies during this time,

spending their time, money, and mana on getting an upper hand.

“How did you even find out about that?” Zach asked with a frown, directing his question at Jornak

instead of Silverlake. Clearly he felt the lawyer was the source of the information. “I mean, even I

didn’t know I made a deal with the angels, so how…?”

“You did know,” Jornak said, shaking his head. “The angels didn’t tell you who they were, but you

are not completely stupid.” Zach scowled at him but said nothing. “There are only so many powers

capable of doing what they did. You eventually figured out who it could be and raided church

archives to see if they had records of similar deals being made. They did. In fact, they had examples

of past angelic contracts – many, many examples. Even if none of them were directly applicable to

your situation, they still held a lot of clues for those who knew how to read them. You brought them

to me, and we worked together to piece together the general nature of your contract. I don’t dare

claim I understand it completely, since I’ve never seen the actual contract and you can’t directly talk

about it, but I know enough.”

Zorian wasn’t surprised at this. Back when the angel they had summoned caused the contract to

appear, he immediately noticed that the contract was written in very legal terms. More importantly,

they were modern, familiar legal terms, the sort you would see in any sort of legal document in

Eldemar. At first glance at least, the contract looked like something you might get if you visited a

mundane lawyer in Cyoria and asked them to write up a contract for a business deal or something

similar.

That meant the angels had lots of experience when it came to making these contracts. Zach

shouldn’t be the only person working under this kind of contract. There should be others. Perhaps

many others, and not all of them could have a contract backed by divine magic. No matter how

secretive the angels were, examples of past contracts would exist somewhere out there.

And with examples of past contracts in hand, some creativity when answering questions, and an

actual lawyer to consult with… it probably wasn’t impossible to figure out what is happening and how

to convey it to others without tripping the angelic restrictions.

“You know,” Silverlake began, “Panaxeth’s escape does not necessarily have to be for real.”

Zorian gave her a strange look.

“The contract we’re under says we just have to let Panaxeth out of the seal and our job is done,” she

continued. “If the primordial is resealed immediately afterwards, even if we are the ones who do it,

the contract will not punish us.”

“That just shows how utterly confident Panaxeth is in being able to handle everything, including all of

us combined, once it is out of the cage made by the gods,” Zorian told her. “Don’t tell me you

actually think you can seal it back in?”

“I’m not sure you know this, but the gods placed numerous contingencies on Panaxeth’s prison, and

on the prisons of all trapped primordials, for that matter,” Silverlake said. “The moment he gets out,

Panaxeth will get seriously weakened. Even the primordial is not sure how badly the contingencies

will hurt him. If Panaxeth was at the peak of his powers, I would obviously be a fool to try and fight

him, but if he’s weakened badly enough, it is entirely possible. Hell, those cultists trying to take

control of Panaxeth? Maybe they’re not as dumb as we thought they are. They’ve overestimated

their mind magic capabilities, yes, but if they had a master telepath and his hundreds of aranean

friends–”

“No,” Zorian told her.

“It was just a thought,” Silverlake said easily, not arguing him over it. “An idle thought. I don’t really

think us mere mortals could seriously control an entity on the level of Panaxeth, but perhaps we

might be able to muddle his thoughts and hinder him long enough to push him back into the seal.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Me and Red Robe… sorry, Jornak… I still can’t believe that little shit lied to

me about something so petty… and that I fell for it…”

Zorian gave her an annoyed look as she started muttering to herself again and she cackled at him in

response. Some habits were hard to break, it seemed, even if she had suddenly regained her youth.

“Anyway, if you agree to this, then this whole conflict could be avoided. We get to weasel out of our

contract and the primordial would still be sealed at the end of the month, which means that part of

the angelic contract will be fulfilled, at least. We no longer have any reason to fight you or support

the invasion. Happy ending for everyone!”

“I know I’ve been quiet throughout this entire meeting, but surely you didn’t forget I’m standing right

here, listening to you?” Quatach-Ichl asked her, raising his eyebrow at him. “This ending of yours

certainly isn’t happy for me. And if I’m not happy, no one is going to be happy.”

Silverlake clacked her tongue before giving Jornak a look of distaste.

“I told you we shouldn’t have invited him along,” she told him loudly. “What good is he here,

anyway?”

“Actually, that reminds me of something I’ve been wondering about for a while now,” Zorian spoke

up, butting in on their argument. “Namely, why is Quatach-Ichl going along with this?”

The ancient lich gave him a curious look. “What do you mean?”

“Shouldn’t you want Jornak to make good on his threats?” Zorian asked him. “Why are you here,

helping him bring about this truce? Why not purposely sabotage the talks and let Jornak damage

Eldemar as much as possible. That’s what you’re here for, no?”

“Ha,” Quatach-Ichl said. “No, not exactly. I’m trying to push the continent into something more

favorable for Ulquaan Ibasa, not cause widespread chaos and uncertainty.”

“Oh, right. I remember now. You’re trying to install Falkrinea as the local hegemon,” Zorian said

loudly, pretending he was just loudly thinking. He made a couple of ‘random’ gestures with his

hands, which he hoped would look completely incomprehensible to everyone except Quatach-Ichl. It

was something he learned while traveling through Xlotic with Zach and Neolu, and should be

completely opaque to anyone who has never been there. “Still, weakening Eldemar and the

surrounding countries can only help you in that regard.”

“You seem to know a fair deal about me,” Quatach-Ichl noted, giving him a searching look. “We must

have interacted pretty heavily in the past. Interesting, considering we seem to essentially be natural

enemies. Anyway, I don’t think I agree with you on this. Let’s just leave it at that. Besides, why are

you trying to convince me that I should start another continental war right now? Shouldn’t that be

against your goals?”

“I was just curious,” Zorian said, before falling silent.

Jornak and Silverlake gave them both suspicious looks, faintly aware that something more had been

said between the lines of that conversation, before shrugging it off and continuing with the

negotiation.

The meeting lasted for another hour, most of which was spent making vague (and not-so-vague)

threats towards one another, but eventually they reached an agreement of sorts.

There would be a truce. How long it would last, Zorian wasn’t sure. He would be first to admit that he

intended to dishonor it the moment he saw a good chance to do so. He was sure Jornak and

Silverlake felt the same way. For the moment, though, open conflict between the two groups was put

on hold.

After everyone left, the roof of the academy building remained dark and silent for a while before two

people teleported on top again.

One was Zorian.

And the other was Quatach-Ichl.

“So,” the ancient lich began. “What exactly did you invite me here for, Mister Kazinski?”

“I’m going to try and talk you into giving up on this invasion,” Zorian told him bluntly.

Quatach-Ichl raised his eyebrow at him. “Continue,” he told him calmly.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Zorian began, “but your current thoughts are that if the primordial is

released and lays waste to our surroundings, the angels are eventually going to stop it before it can

do too much damage. After all, you have seen the might of the angels personally, and you are

certain they can do it. So unsealing Panaxeth would destroy Cyoria and deal a lot of damage to

Eldemar, but it would have no real effect on Ulquaan Ibasa or even the Altazian continent as a

whole…”

The ancient lich stared at him silently for a second.

“I’ll repeat what I said earlier… you seem to know a fair deal about me. Curious. Very curious. I

wonder just how much help you got out of my… other self. But that’s a topic for later. Yes, that is

pretty much how I see the situation. Am I wrong?”

“You are wrong, yes,” Zorian said. “I have summoned an angel and spoke with him. It. Whatever it

was.”

He took the cube out of his pocket and showed it to the lich. He hadn’t had a chance to study the

cube yet and deciphered its uses, but he hoped that Quatach-Ichl, being experienced as he was,

would be able to recognize it as an angelic artifact anyway.

Quatach-Ichl leaned forward, silently studying the cube in Zorian’s hands. He did not ask to hold it

(not that Zorian would have given it to him), but eventually he leaned back and took a deep breath.

“It must have been a pretty high-ranking angel you spoke with,” Quatach-Ichl said, sounding

honestly a little impressed. “Then again, considering what kind of situation you are involved in, I

supposed it’s to be expected.”

“The angel told me about the contingencies that Silverlake had spoken about earlier. They aren’t just

some simple local effect, like a divine warding field or a stored spell,” Zorian said, putting the cube

back into his pocket. “They are security measures woven into the core of the world… and triggering

them could have effects that would be global in scale. I’m not sure how far-reaching the effects

would be, but there is absolutely no guarantee that Ulquaan Ibasa would not be affected.”

Quatach-Ichl frowned at him slightly, not saying anything.

“Just as importantly,” continued Zorian, “if the primordial is released into the world, the angels will be

given free rein to descend into the material world and intervene directly to stop the primordial. At that

point, they also intend to get rid of all the loose ends wandering around. Like a bunch of people that

escaped from the time loop into the real world or that one annoying lich that made the whole thing

possible to begin with…”

“I see,” Quatach-Ichl said calmly. “You’re saying the angels will go after me if I help release the

primordial.”

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed.

The lich stared at him intensely, as if trying to look into his soul to see if he was telling the truth.

Zorian’s posture remained relaxed and his eyes stared right back at the undead mage in front of him.

He was too old and experienced to be unnerved by something as simple as that.

“I think you’re exaggerating things,” Quatach-Ichl finally said, looking away from him for a moment

and thoughtfully tapping his finger against his leg. “Yes, there is certainly a danger of that

happening, but angels are laboring under many restrictions. In any case, if I were that skittish about

taking chances, I would not be where I am right now. A big part of why being a lich is so great is that

you can take crazy risks without dying for good.”

Zorian frowned. Truthfully, he did not really think he could convince Quatach-Ichl to just give up on

the invasion and go home… but he didn’t expect the lich to dismiss the threat of angels so readily.

Then again, he was right about liches like him being uniquely suited for taking risks. They had their

own personal resurrection point. It was almost like being a time looper, in a way.

Oh well. It was worth a try.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Zorian said, shaking his head. He turned to leave.

“You intend to evacuate your loved ones to Koth, at the Taramatula Estate, right?” Quatach-Ichl

suddenly asked him.

Zorian jolted into full alertness, spinning around to face the lich. He gave him a shocked, searching

look.

“Don’t look at me like that. Silverlake knows about it, so obviously me and that Jornak fellow also

know,” Quatach-Ichl told him bluntly. “Don’t do it. Jornak has somehow managed to reverse-

engineer my permanent gates within the time loop, the thieving wretch. Even as we speak, he is

sending a simulacrum to Koth to build a gate there. If you dump all your people in Koth, they will not

be safe – you’ll just place them all in one spot so Jornak can conveniently capture them all in one fell

swoop. Then he’ll have a whole bunch of hostages to threaten you with.”

“Why–” began Zorian.

“I don’t like him,” Quatach-Ichl said. “Besides, he’s trying to become the overlord of the entire

continent. While I want to say he’s an arrogant idiot who bit off more than he can chew, the truth is

that this time loop you all underwent is one hell of a boon. If he’s right about the first emperor of

Ikosia using the same method for his ascent to power, then I cannot afford to dismiss his ambitions

as a mere delusion. I’d prefer to have him dead by the end of all this, even if that means you emerge

victorious as a consequence. At least you and Mister Noveda have no political ambitions.”

“And if that causes your own invasion to fail?” Zorian asked curiously.

“You agreed to this truce partially because you know you still have a good chance to win, even if you

take a handicap like that,” the lich said. “I believe the same about my chances. We’ll see each other

on the battlefield, Mister Kazinski.”

Before Zorian could say anything else, Quatach-Ichl was gone.

- break -

Not long after the end of the meeting, Zorian went to meet with Spear of Resolve. Part of that was to

inform her of what had happened there – although it was decided she would not participate in the

talks, she was still a crucial part of their forces and someone who knew about the time loop.

Additionally, she and her aranea normally constantly pressured the invaders and their cephalic rat

allies, so it was important he told her about the truce as soon as possible.

However, if anyone from their group were to see them at the moment, they would be shocked at

what they were seeing. Zorian and Spear of Resolve were not meeting each other in the dark

tunnels beneath Cyoria – instead, they were walking through Cyoria’s main square in plain view of

everyone. Throngs of people of all ages wandered around the place, laughing and talking and

arguing, but none of them paid much attention to a teenager and a huge jumping spider walking

beside him. Some of them glanced curiously at Spear of Resolve – it was clear they could see her –

but then they just continued on their merry way, completely unconcerned by the giant spider

wandering around the town square.

Some children running past them accidentally dropped a ball near her and she deftly stopped it with

her long, hairy leg – those spider limbs were more dexterous than Zorian gave them credit for – and

lightly sent it back to them. They awkwardly thanked her for returning the ball to them and then ran

off while loudly arguing about something completely unrelated.

“This is an interesting experience,” Spear of Resolve commented, watching them fade into the

throng of people surrounding them. She was talking vocally this time, making use of a sound spell,

rather than speaking to him telepathically. “Anyway, back to our current topic… no, I don’t think there

was anything else you could have done. You could have just refused the truce, of course, but I have

no doubt our enemy would have done as he promised. Personally, I am glad that crisis has been

temporarily averted.”

“Why?” Zorian gave her a curious look. “None of the threats would really affect you and your web.”

“The wraith bombs terrify me,” Spear of Resolve confided. “I had the misfortune to meet one of those

things once. They can pass through solid stone and they only have to brush against you to do

serious damage. They aren’t immune to mind magic, thankfully, but they are highly resistant to it.

Having hundreds, or even thousands of those things prowling around through Cyoria’s underworld

would essentially guarantee our extinction.”

“Ah,” nodded Zorian. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“Still, while I’m glad we delayed a disaster, that’s all this is. A delay. Even if the truce holds, we still

must figure out a way to counter his threats before the end of the month,” Spear of Resolve

continued. “I’m sure you realized this, but this man is guaranteed to use these things in the end, no

matter what deal was struck.”

A massive flock of pigeons suddenly flew overhead. Some of the birds flew low, speeding right past

Zorian and other nearby people, narrowly swerving left and right to avoid hitting anything. People

around them stopped and pointed, animatedly discussing the disruption, but Zorian and Spear of

Resolve just kept walking.

Eventually, the two of them left the town square and walked into a nearby street. They entered into a

nearby restaurant and decided to sit down for a while. Of course, the chairs were designed for

humans and not very convenient for Spear of Resolve. Thus, they called the staff and got them to

place a stack of wooden boards on top of the seat, so that the aranea could stand on them and still

be high enough to interact with the table (and Zorian) properly.

“So,” Zorian then began. “How many aranea in your web know about the time loop, anyway?”

“Pretty much all of them,” Spear of Resolve said, curiously tinkering with the plate, metal utensils,

and glass placed in front of her.

Zorian sighed heavily. “Of course.”

“Sorry,” she told him. She didn’t sound very sorry, in all honesty. “Word spreads around fast among

us. Especially if it’s something so strange like time travel. It was inevitable that it would become

known by everyone by now.”

“What if you asked them to subject themselves to memory modification?” Zorian asked.

Spear of Resolve was silent for a while.

“It would be… difficult,” she eventually said.

“But possible?” Zorian asked hopefully.

“Potentially possible,” she admitted reluctantly. “There have been events where the entire web

agreed to have memories of a certain incident erased for this or that reason. It is always a

controversial decision, however. I would have to burn through a lot of social capital to make it

happen. And for what? As things currently stand, our sacrifice will not save your friend. What about

that unkillable lich that you never really managed to kill? What about Xvim and Alanic? What

about you? I don’t think it’s fair to ask this of us.”

“I’ve talked to Xvim and Alanic,” Zorian said. “They are… not entirely opposed to losing some of their

memory. I think they could be convinced to go along with it in the end.”

“That still leaves the lich and you as the huge, looming issues,” the matriarch remarked.

“Yes, that’s true,” Zorian agreed. “Incidentally, what about me? Do you think–”

“No,” Spear of Resolve immediately said. “I’ve seen your thoughts. You are practically defined by

this experience of being stuck in the time loop. You spent as much time inside as you did out of it. In

my opinion, no one can erase your knowledge of the time loop without metaphorically taking a

sledgehammer to your mind. I really wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I see,” Zorian said quietly. Part of him was relieved to hear that. He really didn’t like the idea of

losing such a massive chunk of his memories for any reason.

But how can they save Zach, then? Was Panaxeth really right in saying that one of them would have

to die?

He was far more selfish than Zach, he realized. Zach had already decided to die if it means he has

to kill Zorian in order to live. If the situation was reversed, Zorian wasn’t sure he could accept his

own approaching death so easily.

He was quiet for a few seconds, lost in thought, before shaking his head and focusing on Spear of

Resolve again. She was quietly studying him with her large, pitch black eyes, still standing on the

stack of wooden boards that the staff of the restaurant placed on her chair.

The nearby waitress asked her if she wanted something to drink, undaunted by the fact she was

talking to a giant spider, but the matriarch politely refused her.

“Anyway,” Zorian suddenly said, sweeping his hand around them. “What do you think about all of

this?”

“What, the city and the restaurant?” Spear of Resolve asked. Zorian nodded. “It’s nice. Novel.”

“Nothing jumps out at you?” he asked with interest.

“You mean, other than the fact people around us are ridiculously accepting of me?” the matriarch

asked rhetorically. “Well, there are a few minor details here and there. The vibrations I’m sensing

through my feet do not quite match up with what I’m used to, and it’s sometimes obvious that the

conversations in the background are pure gibberish if you listen to them closely, but otherwise it all

looks very convincing.”

“Recreating exotic senses like your tremor sense is a pain in the ass,” Zorian admitted. “I did my

best, but I’m not surprised I didn’t quite succeed.”

“I’m honestly shocked that you managed to make all this so convincing to my aranean senses,” the

matriarch said. “It’s not just a matter of mind magic skill – you must have a very firm grasp of our

perspective of seeing the world to succeed at this. I’m guessing you read many, many aranean

minds inside the time loop.”

“I actually shapeshifted into an aranea a bunch of times, just to really see what it was like,” Zorian

said.

“Ah. Maybe I should try that and be a human for a day,” Spear of Resolve mused. “I’m betting it

would be an unforgettable experience. Anyway, why don’t we stop here for today?”

“Fine,” Zorian agreed. “Truthfully, I’m starting to get a little mentally tired from maintaining this for so

long.”

Without warning, the world around them blurred and melted, like it was falling apart at the seams. In

only a few moments, the two found themselves sitting on the cold stony floor of a small cavern in

Cyoria’s underground.

The city and the people in it were gone, like they never existed.

Indeed, that was what happened. Everything they saw had literally happened all in their heads. It

was nothing but a mental illusion that Zorian had summoned around them.

“It’s still going to need some work if you really want to use it in the way you hope to,” Spear of

Resolve remarked.

“I know,” Zorian agreed. “I’m going to need your help with this.”

“That won’t be a problem,” the matriarch said. “Maybe I’m not powerful enough to directly confront

our enemies, but this is exactly my sort of problem. I assure you, I am very good at mind magic.”

They talked for a few more minutes before Zorian decided it was time to go home for the day. It had

been a long day and he had to sleep on things before he could consider how to go forward.

“One moment, please,” the matriarch said before he could leave. “I understand the logic regarding

my vulnerability to enemy action and I agree it is wisest for me to stay in the safety of our settlement

for now… but I am a little unsatisfied with our current state of communication. No offense, but I’m not

comfortable being totally reliant on you for all contact between us.”

“So…?” Zorian asked curiously.

“So I decided to assign you a liaison,” she said.

“A liaison?” Zorian repeated. “I… guess that’s fine, yes.”

“Great. I’ll call her over right now. I’m sure you’ll get along perfectly,” Spear of Resolve said with a

trace of humor in her voice.

Why…?

Before he could say anything, a smallish aranea excitedly skittered into the room, jumped right next

to him and then excitedly started circling around him, thoroughly checking him out.

[Hi, hi!] A cheerful, bubbly voice suddenly sounded in his mind. [I’m Enthusiastic Seeker of Novelty,

but you can just call me Novelty! Do you want to be my friend?]

Chapter 098

Beneath the Surface

After the two groups of time travelers agreed to the shaky truce, the daily fighting stopped and the

situation in Cyoria stabilized. Zach and Zorian no longer sent their simulacrums to raid invader bases

and assassinate their leaders, and the invaders seemed to have no interest in testing their luck with

them. Zorian had been worried that their enemies would try to strike at them indirectly, perhaps by

sending the law enforcement after them or by attacking targets technically unrelated to them, but

fortunately, they did no such thing.

Not that the two groups were entirely ignoring each other just because they weren’t fighting, of

course. Zach and Zorian were constantly monitoring invader movements, trying to figure out what

they were doing and what their secrets were. Where they had placed all those wraith bombs Red

Robe was threatening them with, for instance. Red Robe and his allies were similarly spying on them

in return. Although both groups were clearly aware of each other’s surveillance, there was an

unspoken agreement that this was perfectly acceptable and the truce continued.

Even though this was just the calm before the storm, Zorian found himself kind of enjoying it. Too

many things had happened recently, barely days apart from each other, and he had never really had

time to sit down and process it all properly. They’d failed to get their group physically out of the time

loop, and he ended up killing his old self after entering the real world. Zach had almost died at the

start of the month, and he was certain to die at the end of it if they couldn’t find a solution to the

angelic contract he was working under. He doubted he would figure out something insightful about

that just because he spent a few days mulling things over, but it would make him feel a little better,

at least.

Of course, he couldn’t really justify wasting time right now, truce or no truce. Things still needed to

be done, preparations made. Thus, he decided to simply spend more time in his workshop, building

up his arsenal of bombs, golems, and magical devices. Something that was both useful and relaxing.

He had actually wanted to set aside more time for magical artifice for a while now, but the frantic

pace of their activities in these past few days made that all but impossible. Just building enough

simulacrum bodies and equipping them for the daily skirmishes was challenging enough.

In any case, Zorian was currently sitting in his workshop – a spacious room in the Noveda Mansion

that Zach had generously donated for his purposes – and staring at a shiny metal plate in his hands,

considering things. The large wooden table in front of him was an absolute mess of tools, half-

processed materials, technical reference books, and hastily drawn blueprints that probably only

made sense to him and no one else. The rest of the room was not much better. Tall, dangerous

looking golems stood lined up next to one of the walls, some of them with gaping holes in their

chests, still missing critical components before they could be completed. A stack of small metal

cylinders densely covered in glowing lines and magical glyphs lay seemingly forgotten in one of the

corners.

Zorian glanced at the half-finished construction on the table in front of him before returning his

attention to the metal plates in his hand. The device he was building was still barely formed, but a

perceptive onlooker would be able to puzzle out that it was a fairly large and very complicated cube.

The center of it consisted of several rare and expensive crystals, which were then surrounded by a

plethora of gears and interlocking pieces of metal, wood, and stone. Most of it was already done, just

waiting for him to put it all together and cast the necessary spells, but he still had to make the outer

chassis of the cube.

[What are you making?] a cheery, excitable voice suddenly sounded in his mind.

Zorian glanced at Novelty, who was currently wandering around the room and inspecting everything

within her reach, caressing the items with her hairy spider legs and occasionally taking a nibble

when she thought he wasn’t looking. Most of his allies had no real interest in his workshop and what

he did there, as they had no interest or deep understanding of magical artifice, but just about

everything human-related was new and exciting for Novelty so she insisted on coming along. He

suspected she would get bored of it all very soon, but for now she was surprisingly well behaved.

It was amusing, he thought to himself. Once upon a time, her presence here would have driven him

up the wall and he would have done all he could to get rid of her. Now, he found her antics to be…

kind of nostalgic. She reminded him of an older, simpler time. A time when Novelty had been entirely

qualified to teach him mind magic and the aranea had been his only friends. Even though Spear of

Resolve had intended to betray him in the end – something he had never actually revealed to the

aranea here in the real world – he still felt gratitude towards her and her web.

He sometimes wondered what his life would have been like if they had somehow survived that

fateful restart. Would the final outcome have been better with them around, or was their doom a

necessary price for him to develop into what he was today? After all, without that reckless ploy he

and Spear of Resolve concocted, Red Robe might have decided to stick around in the time loop for

a long time. Zorian could easily imagine a situation where he never contacted Zach at all, constantly

moving in the shadows in fear of attracting Red Robe’s attention, the aranea his only ally…

[Hey! Why aren’t you answering me?] Novelty protested.

What? Oh right, his project…

[It’s secret,] he told her, shaking his head.

[Secret project…] she said, tapping her legs on the floor excitedly. Rather than backing off, she

seemed only more fascinated by the secrecy. [Is it a weapon? Ooh, maybe it’s a collapsible golem

that transforms into a giant spider when a command word is spoken!]

[Why would I make a golem in the form of a giant spider, of all things?] he asked her, raising an

eyebrow at her.

[Well, everything is better with spiders,] she told him matter-of-factly. [Plus, I heard you humans

found us cute.]

Zorian gave her an incredulous look.

[What? What?] she demanded, shuffling from side to side in agitation.

[I… think one of your friends played a prank on you or something,] Zorian said diplomatically.

[No way!] she protested. [I have it on good authority that… I mean, you humans like small, furry

animals, right? I saw your little sister playing with that black cat yesterday, and some people are

taking care of dogs and stuff…]

[I’m afraid humans don’t really place you in the same category as cats and dogs,] Zorian told her. [In

fact, a sizable number of humans think spiders are pretty… horrifying.]

[Even giant spiders?] Novelty asked, visibly incredulous.

[Especially giant spiders,] Zorian said, laughing.

[How mean!] Novelty whined, her entire body vibrating in a clear show of annoyance.

Idly, Zorian wondered if painting Novelty pink and wrapping her in ribbons and glitter would make her

cute enough for people to coo over. He could probably talk Novelty into going along with it…

Well. Something to think about if they managed to survive the month.

Fortunately, Novelty got over the incident very quickly and continued her exploration of Zorian’s

workshop instead of brooding over the whole event.

Zorian left her to her exploration. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and when he

opened his eyes again the metal plate in front of him was densely covered in spell formula markings.

They weren’t real, of course. The whole thing was just a mental illusion – a visualization of what the

end result would look like based on his plans. Spotting a few possible flaws and failure points, he

quickly went through a lengthy series of complicated calculations inside his head, almost instantly

calculating problems that would have taken another spell formula crafter an entire afternoon of

diligent calculation using pen and paper. The visualization of the end result blurred for a moment and

then shifted into a different configuration that took these new calculations into account.

The process repeated itself several times, gradually refining the design. Most other artificers would

have to spend a lot of time and mana making test plates and waste hours upon hours every time

something had to be recalculated or adjusted, but Zorian’s mental enhancements allowed him to

sidestep most of that process.

Of course, all this work wouldn’t even have to be done if it weren’t for the fact that he had lost most

of his spell formula blueprints while crossing over into the real world. So much work lost…

Thankfully, spell formulas were one of the fields he was most confident in.

He suddenly realized Novelty was poking a small metal sphere he left on a nearby chair. He pointed

his hand towards her, causing invisible waves of telekinetic force to seize her entire body, and then

gently but firmly dragged her away from the offending object.

“Don’t touch that,” he told her verbally. “It’s dangerous.”

She gave him an indecipherable look, staring at him quietly for a few seconds.

“What?” he asked her.

[You’re pretty scary,] she told him. [I didn’t even see you cast anything. You just casually pointed at

me and I suddenly couldn’t move! And then you just dragged me off like it’s nothing… I thought

mages like you needed to mumble and wave when they do their weird human magic?]

“They do. I’m just very, very good at this,” he told her. Though this did remind him that he needed to

curb these kinds of moments as much as possible, since this kind of casual use of unstructured

magic was not something a teenage mage like him should possess. Holding back for years and

years was going to be hard…

[How did you even know what I was doing?] she continued. [Your back was turned! I’m sure of it!]

“This whole room is crisscrossed with a mesh of hair-thin mana threads centered on me,” Zorian told

her. “Whenever you pass through them, I can sense it.”

[Like an invisible web?] she asked.

“Yes, exactly,” he agreed. It was a detection trick he had learned at some point in the time loop,

inspired by Taiven’s old trick of flooding her surroundings with her mana to detect hidden attacks

and enemies. He didn’t have the mana reserves to copy her trick exactly, but he didn’t really have to.

Shaping the mana into a mass of threads was much cheaper than simply flooding every nook and

cranny with his mana, yet just as effective for his purposes. The only downside was that this kind of

‘detection web’ required insanely good shaping skills to execute, but that was not really something

Zorian had trouble with.

[Scary…] she repeated unhappily.

She glanced at the metal sphere she had been poking before he stopped her, and then gave him a

speculative look.

[So what’s that thing anyway?] she said, pointing at the small sphere with one of her legs. [You didn’t

complain when I was touch– err, I mean looking at the other things in the room, but you immediately

reacted now? What is it?]

“It’s a hollow metal sphere holding a pocket dimension inside,” he told her. “It’s supposed to suck in

and contain a creature inside. Like a portable prison for powerful monsters.”

[I… don’t understand,] she complained. [That’s meant to capture people? But it’s so small! I’d never

fit inside!]

Oh, right… not everyone was familiar with the concept of expanded spaces and pocket dimensions

and whatnot.

“It’s bigger on the inside than on the outside. There is an entire room inside that little metal ball.

You’d fit in just fine,” he explained.

Novelty was quiet for a second, trying to process this.

[Oh. How weird,] she eventually said. [You shouldn’t leave it lying around like that, then. What if

someone stumbles upon it when you’re not around and gets sucked in? They could starve to death

before you remember to check inside!]

“Give me some credit. I did put some safeguards on it. It’s just that it’s meant specifically for

capturing giant spiders, so I’m not sure if the safeguards would work properly for an aranea like you.

I kind of forgot I left it lying around when I let you come today,” Zorian explained.

[Oh. Wait, why are you making tools for capturing giant spiders?] Novelty asked, suddenly sounding

concerned.

“It’s a secret,” Zorian said. “It has nothing to do with aranea, though, so you can rest easy.”

Plus, if he wanted to deal with the aranea, he wouldn’t need to resort to such complicated and

expensive methods. But he didn’t really say that out loud. Novelty already thought he was scarily

powerful, after all, no need to feed her paranoia further.

[I kind of want to get inside now to see what it’s like,] Novelty eventually admitted, staring intently at

the sphere.

Zorian snorted at the admission. And here he thought he was scaring the poor thing. Nosy little

spider couldn’t resist sticking her legs and fangs absolutely everywhere…

“It’s meant to be a prison, so it’s pretty bare,” Zorian told her. “Wait a few days and I’ll show you

something similar on a far larger, more interesting scale. There is an entire palace in there. And

Princess. I guess I can introduce you to her at that time.”

[Princess? You know royalty?] Novelty said, sounding very fascinated.

“Princess isn’t really an officially recognized ruler of any place, but she’s very… majestic. Very

memorable. I’m sure you’ll be suitably impressed after seeing her,” Zorian said, smiling evilly inside.

[Huh. You know, you’re pretty nice to me,] Novelty remarked.

“Yes, I’m a pretty great guy, aren’t I?” Zorian indulgently agreed.

[Did we know each other? Before, I mean? In the future? Err, I mean… this is so confusing… you

know what I mean!] Novelty fumbled, waving her front legs in front of her frustratingly.

Zorian tapped his finger on the table thoughtfully. He never actually told the aranea the fine details

about what happened in the time loop, and definitely didn’t mention Novelty, as she wasn’t terribly

relevant in the grand scheme of things.

“What gave you that idea?” he asked her.

[It just seems like you know me a little too well,] she said. [It’s true, isn’t it? We totally knew each

other in the future you came from, didn’t we?]

“You taught me mind magic a few times,” Zorian admitted.

[I was your teacher?] Novelty said incredulously. If she was human, she would have probably

gasped. [But that means… I wasn’t just your friend, I was your senior! You should be paying your

respects to me!]

“Keep dreaming,” Zorian said. “It was just a couple of basic lessons, and you’re younger than I am.”

[The matriarch said you don’t even qualify as a real adult in human terms, whereas I already went

through the maturation ceremony. So there,] Novelty insisted stubbornly.

She almost immediately drooped down in an exaggerated gesture of defeat, though.

[Though… if I were honest… I kind of want you to be my teacher instead,] she admitted. [I kind of

want to try learning human magic, and you’re the only human mage I know, so… you’d be willing to

help your future teacher out, wouldn’t you?]

“Sure,” Zorian shrugged. “I already have a huge list of people I need to help out once this is all

settled, what’s one more person on the list? You’re going to have to wait for this month to end,

though.”

[Yes!] she cheered. [I’ll wait! It’s totally not a problem! Patience is my best feature!]

It took an inhuman amount of self-control for Zorian not to roll his eyes at her.

[What?] she demanded.

“Liar,” he told her flatly.

[How can you talk like that to your teacher?] she complained. [Kids these days, no respect…]

Zorian blocked her out and turned back to the metal plate on the table in front of him.

- break -

In a small but familiar tavern in Cyoria, simulacrum number three sat alone in a corner, curiously

studying his surroundings. The insides of the tavern were dark, the air stale, but the place was still

familiar to the simulacrum even after all these years. This was the tavern where he used to talk with

Haslush Ikzeteri, the detective who taught him divination way back when he had still been a novice

mage. Now, he would be meeting his old divination teacher again, this time in the real world.

He was disguised for the occasion. At the moment, the simulacrum looked like an older middle-aged

man, with graying hair and a bushy, prominent mustache. A formal brown suit, a weathered wooden

cane, and a roll of yesterday’s newspapers completed a picture of a regular, nondescript man that

he hoped wouldn’t attract too much attention. However, based on the frequent glances he was

getting from other people, he was pretty sure he failed at looking like he belonged here. It was likely

that regular visitors to this tavern already knew each other and that a newcomer like him was

automatically noteworthy, or maybe he just wasn’t as good at pretending as he thought he was. In

any case, it didn’t matter much, since he intended to discard this identity entirely after today’s talk.

Eventually a familiar man approached his table. Middle aged, dressed in a cheap, rumpled suit and

kind of unkempt, Haslush looked just like he remembered him. He scanned the tavern quickly, his

eyes soon falling on the disguised simulacrum. The simulacrum met his gaze, and they stared at

each other silently for a second. Haslush had a sleepy, lazy look on his face the whole time as he

studied him, but the simulacrum could see a trace of wariness bleed into his posture. The

information provided by his empathy and soul perception reinforced this. Eventually, the detective

averted his eyes, rubbed his nose for a second, and then casually ambled over to the simulacrum’s

table.

“Hi there. Do you mind if I sit here?” Haslush asked in a lazy voice.

“Not at all. After all, I did ask to meet you here,” the simulacrum said.

“Ah, so you were the one that asked to see me,” Haslush said, nodding to himself. He plopped

heavily into the chair in front of him, ignoring the ominous creaking of the wood beneath him, and

ordered himself a drink. “Why all this cloak and dagger stuff, if I may ask? You didn’t even give me

your name in that letter you sent me.”

“With good reason,” the simulacrum said. “We’d both be in danger if you knew who I am.”

“But I already know your face now so–” Haslush began, before suddenly frowning. He narrowed his

eyes at the simulacrum, his irises glittering with a subtle divination spell. “This isn’t your real

appearance, is it?”

“No,” the simulacrum admitted, shaking his head. “For reasons of convenience, you can call me

‘Kesir’, though that isn’t my real name either. I’m just a throwaway simulacrum. After this talk, I will

vanish into ectoplasmic smoke and we’ll hopefully never speak again.”

“A simulacrum?” Haslush repeated, visibly taken aback.

Zorian understood the reaction. Simulacrums were high-level magic, not something that one

regularly encountered.

Rather than saying anything, the simulacrum extended his arm between them and willed it to unravel

for a second. It quickly grew blurry and dissolved into a mass of glowing blue smoke, before

suddenly reforming itself back into his arm.

For this particular meeting, he didn’t inhabit the usual golem body that most of Zorian’s simulacrums

were equipped with these days. The fewer traces he left here today, the better. He was pretty sure

he had covered his tracks well enough to stop Red Robe from knowing about this meeting, but it was

still best to minimize risks.

“Well, I’ll be damned. That’s not a piece of magic you see every day, that’s for sure,” Haslush said,

recovering his calm, lazy façade. “Are you sure you got the right person for this, though? This

sounds almost like a job for spies and crown agents, not little old me. I’m just your average

detective, Mister Kesir.”

“For reasons that will soon become obvious, I can’t contact anyone particularly high ranked, or

things will get really bad,” the simulacrum said. He took a large leather paper holder out of his jacket

pocket, deliberately making the entire process visible to the man in front of him.

Haslush’s eyes widened imperceptibly when the simulacrum retrieved a large object from a jacket

pocket it couldn’t possibly fit into. It was just a temporary pocket dimension, not even a permanent

expanded space, but most people would have still never encountered that sort of thing in their entire

life. More than even the simulacrum, pocket dimension creation was a rare form of magic.

“Please take a look at this,” the simulacrum told the man, handing him a stack of pictures and

documents before leaning back in his chair and patiently waiting.

Haslush cautiously leafed through the papers, periodically frowning and tapping his fingers on the

table. His expression worsened as time went by, and at some point he ordered some really strong

alcohol to get through the rest, but eventually he skimmed through the whole stack. There wasn’t

enough time for him to comb through the whole thing, but even a casual glance through the

documents Zorian gathered painted a grim picture.

“This is insane,” Haslush eventually said, downing an entire glass of hard alcohol and slamming it on

the table in front of him. Some of the nearby tavern patrons glanced at them curiously for a moment.

“A full scale invasion of the city with the local mage guild in on the whole thing? How can something

like this be real? A conspiracy this grand and far-reaching should be impossible to pull off.”

“The invaders are using permanent gates – a concept that has not been known to exist until now. On

top of that, the local authorities have been hopelessly infiltrated and are working with the invaders to

cover up the whole thing. It’s very real,” the simulacrum said.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Haslush suddenly said. “A defector. That’s the only way you could

possibly know all this and have this much evidence.”

“I’m not one of them,” the simulacrum insisted, “but they do have a certain amount of influence over

me, or else I wouldn’t be moving in the shadows like this. If I go public with this, the results will be…

disastrous.”

“Really?” Haslush asked, raising his eyebrow at him. “A mage of your caliber…”

“I didn’t say I would die. Of course I can always run away and hide. I said the consequences would

be disastrous,” the simulacrum clarified.

“More disastrous than the city being invaded by monsters, demons, and the undead?” Haslush

asked dubiously.

“Yes,” the simulacrum said.

Haslush waited for a second, but the simulacrum didn’t intend to clarify. What he was telling the

detective was unbelievable enough without getting into the whole wraith bomb situation or the

possibility of an army of dragons laying waste to northern Eldemar.

“Wouldn’t the same be true if I were to make this public?” Haslush asked.

“Yes,” the simulacrum admitted. “To be honest, the enemy would instantly realize where you got

your information from, so you trying to alert people to this would be no different than me doing it

myself. Well, other than the fact you’d be much easier to silence than me.”

“Lovely,” Haslush said calmly. “So you don’t actually want me to make these documents known to

anyone?”

“I obviously can’t stop you from doing what you feel is right,” the simulacrum said. “But I wouldn’t

recommend it, no.”

“What do you expect me to do with this, then?” Haslush asked, waving the leather paper holder in

front of him. He looked genuinely curious, rather than angry.

The simulacrum was actually rather impressed with how Haslush was behaving. Most people were

either stubbornly disbelieving or had trouble thinking straight when something like this was dumped

into their lap. In fact, Haslush wasn’t the first person they were contacting about this, and he wouldn’t

be the last, but he was the one who had had the best reaction thus far. This didn’t mean he would

end up being useful in the end, of course, but it was encouraging.

“I don’t know,” the simulacrum said. “Although it may seem like I’m holding all the cards here, I’m

actually not sure what should be done here. I’m not a professional spy or master manipulator. I’m

hoping that you will know what to do with this better than I do.”

Haslush stared at him quietly for a second before leafing through the pages a few more times. It was

just an idle gesture. The simulacrum could see he wasn’t really reading things, just idly flipping

through the documents as he mulled things over.

He eventually snapped the paper holder shut and pushed it aside before massaging his temples for

a bit.

“This is insane,” he said.

“Yes, you already said that,” the simulacrum noted.

“Well, I feel like repeating myself,” Haslush told him, giving him a weak glare. “I suppose this does

help explain all the weird attacks and sudden deaths my department has been flooded with lately.

Who else did you tell about this?”

“What makes you think I told others?” the simulacrum asked, surprised.

“Who?” Haslush insisted, not offering any explanations.

The simulacrum eventually relented and gave him some names. Kylae and the other priests in the

city, which were slowly being informed about the invasion. Some of the shifters living in the city

whose children were going to be used in the ritual. A few other policemen and detectives Zach and

Zorian had identified as reliable while inside the time loop. And so on.

“That’s more people than I thought,” Haslush noted. “Aren’t you afraid someone will talk?”

“It’s always a possibility, but I feel I judged people correctly,” the simulacrum said. “I’m a mind

reader, after all.”

Haslush immediately graced him with a string of colorful curses before casting mental defense spells

on himself.

“Of course you’re a mind mage, too…” the detective grumbled. “Anyway, since you so graciously left

it up to me to decide how to handle this, I will visit these people and see if we can figure something

out. But if we decide to go higher with this information…”

“Then everything goes to hell, probably,” the simulacrum said. “Though… maybe that would be for

the best. I don’t think there is a perfect answer to be had, here. Maybe triggering everything sooner

rather than later is actually the right move, I don’t know. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you as

much as I can… but I’m not all powerful. Don’t be surprised if you end up dead after talking to the

wrong person.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Haslush said thoughtfully. “I’m still not tired of living, I can assure you that

much. Plus, I know better than anyone how disgustingly underhanded the mage guild can be about

protecting people who really don’t deserve state protection, just because they are useful in some

way… but let’s not talk about that right now. Do you have anything else for me?”

“Yes,” the simulacrum said, retrieving a paper envelope sealed with ornate red wax. “Here, have

this.”

“What is it?” Haslush asked, flipping the envelope curiously in his hands.

“Don’t open this until the end of the month,” the simulacrum warned him. “Otherwise I will assume

the letter has been compromised and abandon that particular place. That said, there is a key to a

post office box inside. It’s empty right now, but if the worst happens, there will be a package inside at

the end of the month, explaining everything and containing some information to be distributed to

various people.”

“Insurance in case you die, eh?” Haslush guessed. He casually stuffed the envelope in his pocket,

carelessly crumpling it in the process. “Alright. Do you think–”

But the simulacrum was already unraveling, quickly becoming intangible ectoplasmic smoke.

Before he completely dissolved, he thought he heard Haslush say something about rudeness.

- break -

In Imaya’s kitchen, there was a large and curious gathering. Zorian, Imaya, Kirielle, Kael, Kana, Rea,

Nochka, Taiven and Xvim were all present. They weren’t doing anything terribly important – the older

people present were playing a game of cards and having scattered conversations, while the three

little girls ran around playing with dolls. In the beginning they also participated in the card game, but

they were not very good at it, so they eventually wandered off to do their thing.

These sorts of meetings had happened a few times already, but they’d never had so many people

before. In addition, Xvim’s presence was an unusual event, to say the least.

Zorian thoughtfully fingered one of the cards in his hand, purposely ignoring Taiven, who was sitting

beside him and craning her neck in an attempt to ‘stealthily’ peek at his hand. Times like this were a

bit of a guilty pleasure for him, since they were entirely unproductive and he realistically shouldn’t

waste time on them. The reasonable response to Imaya’s request to join them in their game would

be to say he’s busy and go back to analyzing Zach’s contract again, but… he was only human.

Sometimes, he just wanted to play cards and relax, even when the fate of the whole city was at

stake.

Xvim was present here for a reason, though. With the discovery of Zach’s contract and the fact Red

Robe was sending a simulacrum to Koth to take his friends hostage, he was presented again with

the question of what to do about his friends and family in the upcoming invasion. He clearly couldn’t

leave them to wander the city on invasion day, ignorant of the threat. However, he also couldn’t just

tell them about the time loop and dump them all at the Taramatula Estate in Koth.

In the end, it was decided that Zach and Zorian shouldn’t be doing the evacuation of all these people

in the first place. Some people – Taiven for example – reacted very poorly to Zach and Zorian

revealing crazy powerful abilities that they shouldn’t have, and others might refuse to cooperate with

a bunch of teenagers trying to drag them off to a completely unknown place all of a sudden. It was

better to have an adult in a position of authority to contact the people. Someone in on the whole

story, capable of advanced dimensionalism, and respectable looking. That made Xvim the prime

candidate, especially since he claimed he could talk Ilsa into accompanying him and lending

additional weight to his words. Ilsa was Imaya’s best friend, so she would probably trust her if she

said Imaya had accompanied them and hid for a few days.

But it was still best if Xvim wasn’t a total stranger to the people he intended to contact, so it was

agreed that he would visit Imaya’s place one day. Officially, the visit was because he had to discuss

something with Zorian, since he was his mentor and all, but the real reason was so that he could

introduce himself to everyone. That way, when he and Imaya came knocking to people and told

them that they had to evacuate out of the city for a few days because an attack was imminent, they

would hopefully be more open to the idea.

As for Zorian, it was his job to arrange things so that most people were actually present when Xvim

visited.

He thought he had done a decent job there, to be honest.

“Mister Chao sure is diligent in his work,” Rea remarked, throwing a card at the center of the table.

“You don’t often see teachers making a personal visit to their student’s home. I only ever saw it

once, and that was because the student in question had vandalized another student’s belongings,

not because of anything good. Then again, I did hear that Cyoria’s Royal Academy of Magical Arts is

on a different level than most places…”

“I usually don’t make this kind of personal visit, of course,” Xvim said, casually throwing a card of his

own on top of hers. Zorian thought the man would be awkward or annoyed when presented with this

kind of social gathering over a card game, but Xvim showed no discomfort with the situation

whatsoever. He wasn’t exactly relaxed, but he gave off the same sort of severe, dignified

atmosphere he always did. “Sadly, most students today are very lazy and lack proper dedication to

truly master their chosen fields. They want shortcuts and instant results, and the modern academy

curriculum encourages that sort of attitude.”

“It’s the Weeping, isn’t it?” Kael said softly.

“Indeed,” Xvim nodded solemnly. “With the death of so many mages, the academy received a

directive from on high to lower its standards. In more ways than one. On one hand, this meant

children from wealthy, but not traditionally magical families could attend our institution far more

easily than in the past, and I have no issue with that. Unfortunately, it also meant that some of the

more boring and unpleasant but necessary lessons were removed in favor of ‘practical education’

and other nonsensical words. As if foundation building is not practical…”

The conversation continued for a while in this vein, with people chipping in with their thoughts from

time to time. Zorian noticed Taiven staring at him at one time, but she averted her gaze when he

glanced at her. She had probably started to notice that there was something weird going on with

him. Well, other than him being a telepath and hanging out with sapient underground spiders.

Thankfully, she was still wary of confronting him about it, so he didn’t have to figure out how to

explain anything for now. She was one of the people who reacted very badly to him being suddenly

absurdly powerful and competent, so delaying that confrontation for as long as possible was for the

best.

He was still debating whether it would be better to have her join the fighting on invasion day or to

simply hide her along with all the rest. On one hand, having her join the chaotic final fight would be

extremely dangerous and there was a high chance she could die. He would be devastated if that

happened. On the other hand, she was a warrior mage looking for a chance to get actual experience

and make a name for herself, and he was pretty sure she would choose to stay and fight if she had a

choice. Did he have the right to take that choice away from her just because he would hate to see

her die or get seriously hurt?

He remembered his younger self and how much he hated his parents’ attempts to dictate his life for

him. Taiven’s parents were already trying to keep her safe by steering her away from dangerous

professions and she resented them for it. If he made this choice for her, how was he any different

from his mother? He would be worse, probably, because at least his mother had never used

advanced magic to compel him to obey.

Ugh. He put that decision aside for now. He could tackle that later.

He suddenly realized that Kirielle had brought her new toy to show off for her friends and that it was

attracting attention from the adults as well. It was a small golem Zorian had made for her. Kirielle

had already painted a face on it and added hair and a dress and other little touches, so by now it

looked almost like an animate doll rather than a golem.

[I hope you realize this is a very eye-catching toy, Mister Kazinski,] a voice said in his head. Zorian

was startled to realize it was Xvim, contacting him telepathically. Xvim wasn’t psychic and Zorian

hadn’t seen him casting any spells. Then again, it was Xvim… and as he liked to say, there was a

shaping exercise for everything. [Laymen may ignore that golem as a curiosity, but any decent mage

will know how difficult it is to produce such a thing.]

[I know, but that golem isn’t just a toy,] Zorian sent back. [Beneath its harmless façade, that thing is

packed full of weapons and defensive wards. It is a veritable tiny murder machine. This way I get to

give Kirielle a powerful bodyguard without being too obvious about it.]

[Ah,] Xvim responded, surprised. [I am admittedly not an artificer, but your ability in that field never

ceases to amaze me. I suppose I could understand why you fear the government as much as you

do. Your ability to make devices alone would make the authorities do everything in their power to

gain control over you.]

[Yeah,] Zorian agreed uneasily. He knew that his abilities would get out at some point, but that would

hopefully be years in the future. By that point he should have cemented his position a bit and would

be able to resist being pressured against his will.

[I think your sister’s friends are going to be very jealous of her, though,] Xvim noticed, observing their

reactions.

[I’m actually hoping they will ask for a ‘doll’ of their own,] Zorian admitted. [That way I get to put

another two bodyguards among people close to me.]

Xvim had nothing to say to that.

Eventually the game ended and people decided it was time to disperse. Zorian was about half-way

back to his room when he suddenly felt a stream of knowledge flood into his mind.

It was from the simulacrum he had left studying Zach’s contract.

The document was hard to understand. The language used was very complex and weirdly

structured, and there was a lot of text to read through. However, Zorian was pretty sure he

understood the basic points by now.

Two points stuck out to him.

One was that the release of the primordial was tied to the activation of the divine safeguards on its

prison. If the safeguards activated before the month was done, regardless of the reason why, Zach

was considered to have failed in his mission. Zach’s perception did not matter here – the contract

could detect the activation of the safeguards innately, and was apparently tied to them on some

intangible level. Zorian could not detect this connection on Zach, but the contract claimed it existed,

so it probably did. Divine magic was headache-inducing bullshit, anyway. Zorian suspected that this

part of the contract was the core of it. It was clearly the most important part of it; it was defined near

the very beginning of the document and had the most un-ambiguous terms.

The second thing was the definition of time loop knowledge. Zorian had been hoping that

enforcement of this clause depended purely on Zach’s perception of what counted and what didn’t,

which would make it really easy to manipulate it through warping Zach’s perceptions, but it wasn’t

quite that simple. The contract defined exactly what counted as informing people about the existence

of the time loop. Telling people he was a time traveler, describing his experiences in such a way as

to make it clear he had gone through the same month multiple times, describing future events in a

way that made it clear he had already experienced them all ran afoul of the terms of the contract. In

fact, that part of the contract went into considerable detail to close any sort of loophole that would

allow Zach to tell people about his experiences in the time loop. Even telling people he came ‘from

another world’ was not okay. It was obvious for a while now that the angels really didn’t want anyone

to know about the time loop, but reading the contract really drove the point home for Zorian.

Which caused an ominous feeling to arise in his heart. After all, the contract had an expiration date.

At the end of the month, it would dissolve and Zach would no longer be bound by it. That meant that

after the month went by, Zach would be free to make his experiences as public as he wanted to

make them.

Were the angels really fine with that? The contract strongly suggested they weren’t, but there was

really nothing stopping Zach from doing just that. Maybe not immediately after the month ended, but

as years and decades went by? A person might get tempted to write a book or something before he

died…

It would probably be very convenient for the angels if Zach and Zorian stopped Panaxeth’s release,

but perished some time afterwards…

His paranoia aside, the good news was that the enforcement of that particular clause of the contract

depended entirely on Zach’s own perception, just like Zorian suspected. Zach was the one who

determined whether a violation of the contract had occurred or not. If someone knew about the time

loop but Zach never found out about it, the contract would never know either. It pulled information

straight from Zach’s senses, thoughts, and memories.

Zorian knew a couple of mental enhancements that might be used to manipulate that, but Zach’s

restrictions when it came to mind magic prevented him from teaching them to his fellow time traveler.

Not that they had time for that, but still. Zorian had a feeling the mind magic restrictions weren’t just

due to ‘ethical concerns’.

Curiously, there was nothing in the contract stopping Zach from doing what Zorian planned to do and

just giving people research notes that they had written themselves. Even though such information

was clearly made through time travel, and some of the more perceptive and open-minded recipients

would probably realize they come from some future version of themselves, it wasn’t actually against

the rules. At least not to Zorian’s amateur eyes. So long as the notes never said where they came

from and only incidentally hinted at their origin, they were fine from the contract perspective.

This was good, because Zorian had an important task to accomplish in the coming days. He had to

talk to his older brother Daimen. He obviously wasn’t going to be sending his friends and family to

the Taramatula estate now, since he knew that Red Robe was setting up an ambush party there to

take advantage of that. Nonetheless, the fact remained that his older brother and the Taramatula

were now in danger because of him. If only for that reason, he had to talk to them.

And he doubted he could convince Daimen to accept him as the legitimate Zorian without utilizing

the notes his older brother had written for himself inside the time loop.

Even with them, he was definitely not looking forward to that conversation…

Chapter 099

Powderkeg

Arranging a meeting with Daimen was easy this time. Not that it had ever been truly difficult to do

that, but after learning the basics of the local language and customs over the restarts, the task had

become totally trivial. He just had to approach the Taramatula in the right way, and they didn’t even

bother trying to turn him away – they went to fetch Daimen after only a few minutes of convincing,

leaving Zorian to wait at the entrance.

He was currently flipping through Daimen’s notebooks to pass the time, ignoring the strange looks

given to him by the gate guards. The notebook was coded, but that couldn’t stop Zorian at all. With

his mental enhancements active, he could decode the text in an instant, so long as he knew the key.

Not that there was anything really interesting recorded in the notebooks. Daimen had written those in

consultation with Zorian, so this was more about Zorian reminding himself what they put in there

than discovering something new and exciting. He thought about trying to strike up a conversation

with the guards currently observing him, but he knew from previous experience they weren’t the

talkative sort. It didn’t help that his grasp of the local language was pretty shaky still.

After a while, Zorian flipped through the last of the notebooks he had brought along and closed it

shut. He impatiently rocked back and forth in place, taking in the sights around him through his

various senses. In his mind sense and soul sense, the bees coming and going from the Taramatula

estate looked like streams of tiny glittering stars.

Pretty. He turned his back towards the gate and observed the wall of plant life surrounding the

estate. He had been here many times in the past, but he had rarely paid much attention to the lands

surrounding the place. Ignoring the guards and their alarmed inquiries about where he was going, he

promptly wandered off into the wilds and started exploring.

The jungle surrounding the Taramatula estate was kind of beautiful, he realized. No doubt a large

part of that was deliberate design by the Taramatula, but still. There were paths cut into the

vegetation to make the area more accessible to humans, and flowers were everywhere. Zorian

followed the paths with no particular purpose in mind, mentally repelling snakes and biting insects

whenever they got too close to him. No large predatory animals bothered him. The Taramatula had

probably cleared them all out from the vicinity of their home.

Eventually he stopped walking, staring at a particularly large white flower that had a great many

bees swarming over it. A voice sounded from behind him not long afterwards.

“It really is you. Damn it, Zorian, couldn’t you have waited at the entrance just a little bit? If you

wanted to look at bees, there are like a million of them inside the estate…”

It was Daimen, of course. Zorian slowly turned around, observing his eldest brother with a complex

expression. Interacting with people he had gotten to know as temporary loopers before the end was

always rather uncomfortable, and never was this as true as it was right now. The last time he saw

Daimen, his brother had sacrificed himself to ensure Zorian could get out of the time loop alive.

Xvim had sacrificed himself too, of course. So had many other temporary loopers. However,

Daimen’s choice to burn his whole life force to stabilize the passage into the real world had left a

particularly deep impression on Zorian because… it was Daimen. He would have never expected his

eldest brother to sacrifice himself for him.

He had never completely forgiven Daimen for what happened in his childhood, he realized.

Interacting with his eldest brother in the time loop, he grudgingly came to accept he was being kind

of petty and that he needed his brother’s help, but a part of him would always see Daimen as an

enemy. Now that part of him was angry and upset, because he realized he owed a life debt to

Daimen now. Even if the Daimen in front of him knew nothing of it, Zorian himself could never

pretend it wasn’t real.

“What?” Daimen demanded. He sounded pretty annoyed. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“We haven’t seen each other in a while, but I feel like I saw you only days ago,” said Zorian after a

second of pause.

“Ha! Yes, your big brother is just as handsome and dashing as always,” Daimen said, puffing his

chest in an exaggerated manner. He then gave Zorian a scrutinizing look. “You’ve certainly changed,

though.”

Like always, Daimen doubted his identity upon their first meeting. Quite sensible, considering the

distances he would have to traverse just to end up here.

“Yeah, well, people change rapidly during their teenage years,” Zorian commented calmly.

“No, it’s more than that,” Daimen said, shaking his head. “Even your posture is different. You look

calmer. More confident.”

“Confident?” Zorian asked incredulously. He felt anything but confident at the moment. He was

under a tremendous amount of stress at the moment.

“Yeah,” Daimen said. “It seems the academy has been a good influence on you.”

He looked around until he spotted a nearby fallen tree and then casually waved his hand at it. A gust

of wind immediately blew away all the dirt and leaves on top of it, after which Daimen plopped down

on the tree with a heavy sigh. He then gave Zorian a piercing look.

“Why are you here, Zorian?” he asked. “Actually, scratch that. How are you here?”

“Teleportation,” Zorian said. In reality he had opened a dimensional gate straight to Koth, but it was

best to keep that secret for now. “I got someone to transport me directly to you.”

“Transport you directly… Zorian, do you have any idea how dangerous that is!?” Daimen spluttered

at him.

“Of course I do,” Zorian told him. “It’s just that I had no choice but to do this. I had to talk to you as

soon as possible.”

Daimen stared at him for a few seconds, discreetly casting a few divination spells at Zorian and

considering something. Zorian patiently waited for him to finish and pretended he didn’t notice the

divination spells directed at him.

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” Daimen finally asked with a long-suffering sigh.

“Yes,” Zorian admitted. “Big trouble.”

“I knew it,” Daimen said flatly. “Damn it, Zorian… this is the sort of thing I’d expect out of Fortov, not

you. Alright, just… tell me what you have gotten yourself into and I’ll see how I can help you. But you

owe me big time for this! How did you get enough money to pay for teleportation here, anyway? You

didn’t steal from Mother and Father, did you?”

“No, I have plenty of money,” Zorian said, shaking his head.

Daimen swore under his breath. He seemed even more displeased with that idea than with Zorian

stealing money from his family. In all likelihood, he assumed Zorian must have gotten the money

illegally.

Which, now that he thought about it, was pretty much correct. He got most of his current funds by

stealing them from the invaders, after all.

“Anyway, my issue is that invaders from Ulquaan Ibasa and the cultists of the World Dragon are

going to jointly invade Cyoria on the night of the summer festival in order to release the primordial

trapped beneath the city and harvest the souls of everyone currently living there,” Zorian

summarized.

Daimen gave him a strange look.

“What?” he asked with an incredulous laugh.

“Ulquaan Ibasa, the isle of the exiles, is invading Cyoria through a permanent dimensional portal

hidden beneath the city,” Zorian said.

“A-ha,” Daimen said slowly.

“Much of the city’s leadership has been subverted by the Esoteric Order of the Celestial Dragon,

better known as the Cult of the World Dragon. They are working together with the Ibasans to keep

the invasion preparations secret and will directly aid them when they actually invade the city,” Zorian

continued.

“I see,” Daimen said, giving him a sour look. “You are definitely Zorian. Only he would come here

with such a ridiculous story. A real imposter would surely cobble together a far more convincing

scheme than this.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Zorian told him calmly. “Anyway, I don’t really expect you to do much about

the invasion itself. That whole situation is kind of beyond you. Unfortunately, the invaders know I’m

one of the chief people opposing them, so they’re going to go after you and the Taramatula to get

leverage over me. That’s why I hurried over here like this. I had to warn you before it was too late.”

Daimen suddenly frowned, becoming a little more serious.

“Zorian, this isn’t funny,” Daimen protested severely.

“I know,” Zorian sighed. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for getting you into this mess. All I can do is

offer you information, and maybe shelter, if you need one. Though convincing the Taramatula to

evacuate their ancestral estate and leave it at the mercy of the invaders is probably a tall order,

so…”

“You know what? I don’t have time for your bullshit,” Daimen told him, anger and annoyance mixing

in his voice and posture. He got up from his seat and dusted himself off. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll

be going back to my work. When you’re ready to have a serious talk, we can–”

Zorian took the imperial orb out of his jacket pocket and held it in front of him, in plain view of

Daimen.

Daimen froze at the sight, staring dumbfounded at the orb for several seconds.

“Is that…?” he began.

“It’s the imperial orb, yes,” Zorian nodded. “Sorry about that. I know you’ve been looking for it for a

while now, but I am in dire need of it.”

“What? Why…” Daimen said in an uncomprehending manner, unable to accept what he was seeing.

“Considering my earlier story, it should be self-explanatory why I need it,” Zorian noted.

“Not that! I mean… aargh!” Daimen groaned. “How did you get that!? Why do you have that? This

doesn’t make any sense!”

“Here,” Zorian said, reaching into his jacket pocket again and handing Daimen the notebooks he had

written for himself during the time loop. “Read this and things will hopefully make more sense.”

Daimen quickly snatched the notebooks out of Zorian’s hands before giving the imperial orb an

intense look. He then snatched the imperial orb as well before retreating back to his log to study

them both. Zorian let the orb go, unconcerned. Daimen was a great mage, but he was no Quatach-

Ichl. If Zorian wanted to get the orb back, he could do so at any time, regardless of Daimen’s wishes.

Daimen flipped through the notebooks with one hand while fondling the imperial orb in the other,

occasionally muttering to himself in a low voice.

“What? This can’t be right… oh, I remember this one. I was going to check this in the next few

months… how does he even know this?” Daimen muttered. “Wait a minute…”

He suddenly shut up and started pacing like a caged tiger, reading a particular passage. He

eventually spun in place and turned towards Zorian in an aggressive manner.

“What is this!?” he demanded. “Did… did I write this?”

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed.

“But… I don’t remember ever writing this,” Daimen frowned.

“Yes,” Zorian agreed.

“Don’t you ‘yes’ at me!” Daimen protested. “Give me an explanation!”

“I can’t,” Zorian said, shaking his head.

“Oh come on, do you seriously expect me to believe you have no idea how this came to be?”

Daimen said, waving the notebook in front of Zorian’s face.

“I know how the notebooks came to be, of course,” Zorian said. “I even helped you write them. It’s

just that I can’t give you an explanation.”

“You… helped me write these?” Daimen asked, looking at him strangely. He shook his head to clear

his thoughts. “No, ignore that question. Why can’t you give me an explanation?”

“Because lives depend on it,” Zorian told him. “I know I’m asking a lot here, but please trust me on

this. The consequences of me telling you these things would be truly dire. My friend could die. I

could die. The whole city of Cyoria could die.”

“That thing again,” Daimen frowned at him. “This… invasion of yours.”

“In the end, everything comes back to that,” Zorian confirmed, nodding. “Oh, and give me back the

imperial orb, please.”

He stretched out his hand towards Daimen, observing his reaction. Daimen glanced at the imperial

orb in his hand, and then back at Zorian again, his expression deep in thought for a moment.

Then he thrust the orb back into Zorian’s outstretched hand and returned to his log, flipping through

the notebooks again.

“I don’t want to believe this, but there is so much stuff here,” Daimen eventually said, his voice a little

more subdued. “These notebooks… they represent years of work, and I remember nothing of it. Did I

really lose years of my life somehow? It couldn’t be. I would have noticed something this big, there is

no way you can rip out such vast swathes of someone’s memory without completely messing them

up!”

“As I said, I can’t talk about that,” Zorian told him.

“I can’t accept that,” Daimen said, not taking his eyes off the notebook he was reading.

Zorian ignored him.

“You’re in danger,” he told Daimen. “You and the Taramatula both. Originally I intended to evacuate

my friends and Kirielle here to shelter them from the attack and unfortunately the enemy got their

hands on that information. Now they intend to attack this place to get their hands on some hostages

to pressure me with. You need to alert the Taramatula and prepare yourself for the incoming attack,

okay?”

Truthfully, Zorian could simply destroy Red Robe’s simulacrum once it arrived at Koth, ending the

possibility of the threat that way. However, he did not want to do that. As callous as it was, he felt

that making Red Robe waste all his time and mana on this was preferable to him scrapping the plan

entirely and trying to get him in some other fashion. A predictable threat was better than a

completely unknown one.

“So this invasion of yours is so powerful their reach extends all the way to Koth as well?” Daimen

asked him, looking at him like he was an idiot.

“I already told you they have access to permanent gates, so why does this surprise you?” Zorian

asked, giving him the same look back. “They only need one person to build a gate and they can

shuffle their forces to and from any place on the globe.”

“And what do you mean you wanted to evacuate Kirielle here, isn’t she with Mother and Father?”

Daimen continued, ignoring Zorian’s remark.

“No, she’s with me,” Zorian said.

Daimen made a show of looking around, even peering beneath the log he was sitting on. Zorian

rolled his eyes at him.

“I left her in Cyoria, of course,” Zorian told him.

“You left her alone while you traveled to Koth?” Daimen asked flatly, sounding very unamused.

“Calm down,” Zorian told him. “It’s only for a few hours.”

“What? What do you mean ‘for a few hours’?” Daimen protested. “Traveling to Koth takes days, even

with teleportation!”

“We’ll discuss that later, okay?” Zorian tried.

“No, we can’t discuss that later! This whole thing is insane and quite frankly I’m starting to question if

you’re even actually Zorian!” Daimen said, giving him a heated glare. “My brother is fifteen years old

and there is no way he would involve himself with something like this. In fact, even if he wanted to

get involved, he doesn’t have the skills to do so! Who are you really and what did you do to Zorian?”

Zorian was silent for a moment. It was a good question, really. In truth, the real Zorian had died at

the start of the month. He had stolen his body and identity, letting his soul move on to the afterlife.

Daimen wasn’t actually wrong to think of him as an imposter.

If the Daimen in front of him knew the truth, would he consider him his real brother or would he do

his best to avenge the real Zorian? Temporary looper Daimen felt that sacrificing his life so that

Zorian could replace the original was right and proper, but this Daimen might not agree.

It was amusing, Zorian thought to himself bitterly. Years ago, he wouldn’t have given a damn about

what Daimen thought of him and his choices. Now he found himself dreading his judgment, should

his eldest brother ever find out the truth.

“The notebook in your hand,” said Zorian, pointing his finger at the book Daimen was tightly

clutching in his hands, “is proof that things have happened which you have no memory of. Therefore,

should it really surprise you that I am also not how you remember me? I could show you some skills

you taught me. Minor things, but things that should be immediately obvious as your own magical

insights. Would that convince you?”

“I need an explanation,” Daimen insisted, clutching the notebook in his hands so tightly his fingers

turned white from blood loss.

“I’ll give you one at the end of the month,” said Zorian. “After the summer festival.”

That was amusing, too. Zorian had used this excuse so many times in the past, while he was still

inside the time loop. The only difference was that, back then, this offer meant he didn’t really have to

explain anything. The loop would restart before the deadline was reached.

“After this invasion of yours,” Daimen noted shrewdly.

“Yes. As I said, lives depend on it,” Zorian insisted.

“You expect me to help you out for a mere promise of an explanation after the deed is done?”

Daimen asked him.

“No,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “All I want is for you to take my warning seriously and to make

sure the Taramatula do the same. So long as you survive the month and protect your fiancée’s

family from the invaders, I will consider this a success.”

Daimen stared at him angrily for a few seconds, before rising from his log again.

“Let’s go,” he told Zorian.

“Go where?” Zorian asked, taken aback at the statement.

“To Cyoria,” Daimen said matter-of-factly. “You’re going back there now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Zorian admitted. “So you want to go with me?”

“I need to confirm things personally,” Daimen said. “And check up on Kirielle, just in case. Let’s go.”

“Just like that?” Zorian asked for confirmation.

“Is there a problem?” Daimen asked, frowning at him.

“Well, aren’t your fiancée and her family going to freak out if you suddenly disappear for a few

days?” Zorian told him, cocking his head sideways. “I mean, surely you want to explain things to

them before we set off.”

Of course, Zorian could just get him back to Koth in a few hours, but Daimen didn’t really know he

could open a Gate between continents at will…

Sure enough, Daimen’s eyes widened in sudden realization and he slapped himself in the forehead

a few times.

“Focus, focus…” he mumbled to himself. “Alright, so we’re going to put the journey on hold for now.

I… need to talk to a few people first.”

- break -

In the depths of the Ziggurat of the Sun taken over by the sulrothum, a strange meeting was taking

place. Zach and Zorian stood before a huge stone dais that contained this tribe’s sacred fire. The

high priest and his honor guard stood in front of the fire, looking down at the two arrivals. The

massive bonfire writhed and crackled in a strange, somewhat ominous manner, casting light and

shadows alike on the surrounding walls.

Both sides silently scrutinized each other for a full minute before the sulrothum high priest decided to

break the ice.

“Welcome, guests,” the high priest said. “We have been expecting you.”

“You have?” Zorian asked curiously.

That was quite unusual, since their visit here was completely unannounced.

“The angels have informed us of your coming,” the high priest told them.

Of course. Zorian had kind of expected that, to be honest. Funnily enough, the angels were not

nearly as willing to contact human organizations to help them out. For example, Zach and Zorian

had been in secret talks with the Triumvirate Church representatives, and at no point did the angels

contact the Church hierarchy to make the negotiations go more smoothly. But a random sulrothum

tribe in the middle of the Xlotic desert merited them sending actual instruction? Just what made this

tribe of devil wasps so special, anyway?

“Did they inform you why we were coming?” Zach asked them.

“You’re here to ask for help, of course,” the high priest said easily. “A great battle is about to take

place, pitting the allies of heaven against an ancient evil.”

“Well… yeah, that’s what we’re here for,” Zach admitted after a second.

“We accept,” the high priest immediately said.

“Just like that?” Zach asked incredulously, arching his eyebrow.

“What more is there to say?” the high priest asked rhetorically. “Only cowards would shirk from this

kind of battle. To fight and die in the name of heaven is glorious. Surely you understand this? I can

sense the mark of the angels shining bright on you.”

“The mark of heaven…” Zach said sourly. “Yay. What an honor.”

The high priest’s multifaceted eyes stared at Zach for a second, antennae twitching, trying to

interpret his statement.

“Children often do not understand the importance of what their parents try to teach them,” the high

priest eventually remarked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zach asked, annoyed.

“Just a random remark,” the sulrothum high priest said, waving his hand in front of him dismissively.

A very human gesture. Zorian wondered if sulrothum really did that, or if the high priest was familiar

enough with human customs to mimic their habits. “I just realized you are quite young in human

terms.”

“We thank you for your help from the bottom of our hearts,” Zorian quickly said, cutting Zach off from

continuing the pointless argument. “If it’s all right with you, we’d like to discuss battle plans.”

“Let’s,” agreed the high priest.

- break -

In a small, out-of-the-way alley on the outskirts of Cyoria, simulacrum number two was painting a

picture on a wall. It was a small, abstract picture the size of a human head, vaguely resembling an

eyeball if one viewed it from the right angle.

To a casual observer, the painting would likely look like a random graffiti, the likes of which were

quite common in Cyoria. The city was crawling with young mages, after all, and they often used their

newly gained magic skills to vandalize the walls of nearby buildings. Painting spells were beginner

stuff, and nearly every mage was capable of using them.

But the painting was more than just idle amusement. So much more. After half an hour, the

simulacrum carefully connected the last two lines of the drawing, causing a faint blue sigil to

momentarily flash into existence within the painting, before quickly fading away from sight.

After observing his handiwork for a few more seconds, the simulacrum placed his hand on the

painting, activated the spell formula hidden within it, and then dived into it with his mind.

Almost immediately, a sea of glowing suns popped into existence inside his mind, connected by a

dense web of light. His mind raced from one sun to the next, his mind sense and telepathy

manifesting itself throughout the whole network. There were sigils like this one scattered throughout

most of the city by now, and through them, Zorian’s mind powers could envelop nearly all of Cyoria.

Every building, every street was within his reach. He could see and invade the minds of anyone and

anything, from the lowest pigeon to the most high-ranking mage…

He quickly retracted his mind from the sigil, afraid he would get noticed by someone. This had to

stay an absolute secret. No one, not even his closest allies, were allowed to know about the sigil

network.

Taking one last look at the painting, simulacrum number two nodded to himself and wandered off to

place more sigils elsewhere. Some of these paintings were bound to be found and erased by the city

authorities and building owners, so it was best if he had some spares scattered around.

“99 telepathy nodes on the wall, 99 telepathy nodes… take one down, wipe it away, 98 telepathy

nodes on the wall…” the simulacrum hummed to himself.

He had lots of work to do today.

- break -

In one of the empty academy classrooms, Zorian and Tinami sat facing each other, both silent.

Well, for a few moments, at least.

“Are you serious?” Tinami asked incredulously. “You can connect me with the legendary aranea?”

“I’m not sure I would call them ‘legendary’,” Zorian remarked. “They’re more common than you’d

think, and a bit underwhelming once you get to know them. But yes, I can indeed do that.”

He had gotten to talk to Tinami the same way he did in the past – by answering her call to have

someone help her practice her telepathy skills. Naturally, the moment she experienced his innate

mental skills, she wanted to know how he got them, and that quickly led the conversation to the topic

of aranea.

The point of all this, of course, was to get House Aope involved in preparations for the invasion.

They had shown themselves to be quite resourceful and capable the one time he and Spear of

Resolve had brought them into the whole invasion conspiracy. The awful, catastrophic outcome of

that restart aside, the Aope had played their part perfectly.

Hopefully the rumors of House Aope being bad luck were just superstitious nonsense and history

wouldn’t really repeat itself like that, right? After all, House Aope couldn’t have reached its current

status if it was really cursed…

Paranoia aside, he was taking quite a risk by interacting with Tinami like this. Not because he

thought House Aope would mess up their invasion preparations or anything like that, but because of

the attention it would bring to him personally. Officially, Zorian was just connecting Tinami and

House Aope with the aranea, and anything else they talked about had nothing to do with him. In

practice, there was no way the leaders of House Aope would be naïve enough to swallow that story.

This was equivalent to putting a giant beacon on top of his head, telling the Aope leadership that he

was worth paying attention to. Not exactly conductive to his plans to lay low after this whole thing is

resolved.

Still, there was no helping it. The situation was precarious enough that he needed their help if he

could get it.

“You know, you’re more interesting than I thought you were,” Tinami remarked, giving him a shrewd

look.

“Err, thanks,” Zorian said awkwardly.

“Not that way,” she hurriedly clarified. “What I meant was… you’re venturing into the tunnels beneath

the city and taking lessons from giant sapient spiders living there. I never would have guessed you

were that… driven.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Zorian said after a short pause.

“It is,” Tinami confirmed. “By the way, how come you’re missing so many classes? You know that

looks pretty bad on your record, right? Even if you’re more capable than you look, you should still

pay attention to your reputation.”

“Don’t lecture me. You sound like my mother,” Zorian told her. Tinami didn’t seem amused. “Anyway,

I’m really busy with something right now and I can’t come to class. I already told my mentor about it

and he said it was alright. I should be able to start attending classes again after the summer festival.”

Assuming he was still alive and the city remained standing, that is.

“It’s your life, I guess,” Tinami shrugged. “These meetings… we’ll continue with these, yes?”

“Sure,” Zorian said. “As long as you wish.”

“I get the feeling this is far more to my benefit than yours,” Tinami noted.

“Kind of,” Zorian agreed. “But I am learning things here, so it’s okay. This isn’t a zero sum game.”

He wasn’t even lying. Attending these practice sessions with Tinami would hopefully clue him in on

what kind of skill level was considered normal among human mind mages. He had a feeling that

would be crucial information in the near future.

Tinami gave him a weird look when he said that, though.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing at all.”

- break -

In the skies above Iasku Mansion, a lone iron beak was slowly circling the surrounding forest. The

huge flock of iron beaks that guarded the place had long since noticed it, and were watching it

carefully, but they did feel a certain level of kinship with a fellow iron beak, even if it was a foreign

one, so they did not attack it.

The iron beak was actually Zorian, who had used a potion to shapeshift into the said bird. What he

was doing was crazy, but if it could work…

He slowly approached the iron beak flock, probing it with his mind and soul, looking for flock leaders

and weak links. Sudomir and the invaders had these iron beaks controlled through blackmail, having

seized their nests and subverted their leadership, but the flock had never submitted totally. It was

intelligent enough to recognize blackmail and listen to simple orders, but also smart enough to hold a

grudge and plot revenge.

For hours Zorian circled the flock, speaking to them mind-to-mind, subtly subverting the mind magic

used by invaders to control iron beak leaders. If it were anyone else doing it, they would have likely

made a mistake somewhere and alerted the monster handlers that something was happening and

that the flock had gone out of control. But Zorian was good. Too good for the Ibasan monster

controllers to detect anything.

As time went by, the iron beak flock paid more and more attention to the thoughts and images being

fed into their heads. They were quiet and still, but their eyes shone with increasingly malicious glee.

Soon.

- break -

The day of the summer festival swiftly approached. Most of the preparations were complete, but

there was always more that could be done and their actions got ever more frantic and desperate as

the deadline loomed ever closer. Perhaps it was just Zorian’s mind playing tricks on him, but it

seemed to him that even uninvolved people, like Imaya and Kirielle, could sense the heavy

atmosphere and became more serious as a result.

As the end approached, Zach and Zorian evacuated most of the people close to them out of the city.

Having already seen how that sort of thing could go wrong with their original plan to get everyone to

Koth, they did not group everyone together at the same place like they had before. Instead they

picked five different sanctuaries and distributed people among them. In addition to Xvim, Daimen

also got himself involved with the evacuation, drawing on his own connections and experience to

make things go more smoothly.

His brother was still not happy with the amount of secrecy Zorian presented him with, but he seemed

to realize the seriousness of the situation in the end, and agreed to cooperate with them until the

situation was resolved.

After the summer festival was over, however, he was going to come to Zorian for that explanation he

was promised. He was quite vocal about that.

Unfortunately, the evacuation wasn’t entirely successful. While most people agreed to go into hiding

when told there would be fighting in the city during the summer festival, Taiven and Rea refused to

go.

In Taiven’s case, the reason was exactly what Zorian had been afraid of – she thought of it more as

an opportunity to prove herself than a dangerous situation to avoid. She was a fully-qualified

battlemage, after all. All she needed now was some actual field experience. Zorian understood all

that, but he also understood that she was a known friend of his to their enemies, which meant they

would be directing far more forces at her than her skills and reputation warranted. Her combat skills,

impressive as they were for her age, were not enough.

Was he selfish for not explaining that to her? Probably. If he told her the invaders would be gunning

for her because of him, that would raise all sorts of questions about why that is so, and probably lead

to her either finding out everything about him or feeling betrayed and hating him forever for it.

But maybe her hating him forever was worth it if it meant she would survive the month…

As for Rea, she was fine with having her daughter and husband out of danger, but she refused to go

into hiding herself. Her explanation for this was that she was confident enough in her own combat

skills and had to guard their house from looting. They were a very poor family, she said, and their

move to Cyoria had exhausted all of their savings. If their house ended up looted or destroyed, they

would be utterly ruined.

Zorian was wracking his head about how to talk her into abandoning the house – when Rea ended

up inviting him to her house on her own initiative. Zorian was quite surprised at this, as this wasn’t

something Rea typically did. Did she somehow catch wind of his own involvement in all this?

When he finally arrived at her place, however, he was greeted with another surprise: there were two

more people already there.

One was Haslush, the detective that taught him divination and that he had already recruited into their

anti-invasion efforts. He gave Zorian a curious look, but there was no trace of recognition in his eyes.

He probably did not suspect Zorian.

The other was, shockingly, Raynie. His classmate was clutching a cup of hot, steaming tea that Rea

brought her with pale fingers, a blank expression on her face. She looked terrible.

It took a while for her to wrench herself out of her thoughts and notice someone had arrived, but

when she did she gave him a shocked look.

“Zorian? What are you doing here?” Raynie asked.

“I invited him here,” Rea said matter-of-factly.

“Him? He’s the guy you said could help me?” Raynie asked incredulously. “But he’s just a student!

What could he possibly do?”

“I have a feeling mister Kazinski here is more than just a student,” said Rea, giving Zorian a knowing

look. “In any case, why don’t you tell Zorian what happened so that he knows what he’s dealing

with.”

Haslush observed the situation calmly, giving Zorian a thorough look but not saying anything. Zorian

was really uncomfortable at the whole situation.

Raynie stared at him questioningly for a few seconds, before she once again lowered her head and

stared at her tea cup in a defeated manner.

“My brother has been kidnapped,” she quietly said.

Chapter 100

Sacrifice

Standing in Rea’s home, Zorian ignored the curious gazes leveled at him from Rea and Haslush and

kept silent, calmly considering things. A million questions swam through his head. Why were these

three gathered in Rea’s house, despite the fact they shouldn’t even know about each other? Why did

Rea think he could help in this situation and what were their enemies even thinking when they

orchestrated this kidnapping? Was this some kind of strike against him and Zach? Why not go after

all of his classmates, then?

Raynie did not give him a lot of time to ponder those questions, though, and took his silence as a

sign she should keep going.

“My family doesn’t live in Cyoria, so I didn’t even know it happened at first. It wasn’t until my family

discovered some signs the kidnappers might have originated from Cyoria that they contacted me,

several days later, and asked me for help,” Raynie explained quietly. “I was shocked. Shocked that it

happened, and… umm…”

She fumbled with her words for a few seconds before falling into an awkward silence and lowering

her head even further. She looked quite pitiable at the moment.

“That they asked for your help with this?” Zorian tried.

She flinched slightly and gave him a shocked look for a second. Guilt, sadness, and confusion

emanated from her in an equal mix. However, she quickly schooled her expression and cleared her

throat with a trace of panic.

“Y-Yes, exactly! I’m just an academy student, what can I even do?” she said hurriedly. “I want to help

my little brother, of course, but this is way above me! So I… contacted the police about it… and they

eventually pointed me at detective Ikzeteri here, who agreed to help. And… here we are, I guess.”

She took a deep breath after finishing her explanation and gave Zorian a disbelieving, but slightly

hopeful look. “No offense, Zorian, but I’m still not sure how you can help me with this.”

“Neither am I,” Zorian told her honestly.

He could help, of course. How he should go about doing that, however, was something he couldn’t

decide on at the moment.

Raynie’s expression immediately dimmed after his admission, but he didn’t let that bother him. He

couldn’t ruin all their plans just to assure her everything would be alright.

He glanced at Rea and she glanced back at him, completely unconcerned with whether or not she

had judged him wrong. What exactly gave her the confidence that he was someone who could make

a difference here? No matter how he wracked his head, he couldn’t figure it out.

“You’re pretty calm about this,” Haslush commented from the side, giving him a shrewd look.

“Panicking wouldn’t help anyone,” Zorian commented, unconcerned with the veiled accusation. That

wasn’t enough to prove anything.

“That’s not how people work, but alright,” Haslush said with a light shrug. “I guess you’re just an

exceptionally calm person.”

This probably wasn’t a deliberate attack on him and Zach, Zorian decided. While Raynie was one of

their classmates, neither of them were very close to her in the time loop. Zorian did feel a certain

kinship towards her, due to her messed up family situation, but Silverlake shouldn’t know that.

Therefore, Jornak and the rest shouldn’t either.

The fact their enemies kidnapped Raynie’s brother was probably just an accident. Since Zorian

sabotaged their efforts to kidnap shifter children in the city of Cyoria and its surroundings, they

looked further away for suitable targets. They needed those sacrifices, after all. Without the primordial

essence contained in the blood of shifter children, the primordial’s prison couldn’t be opened. In the

time loop, the Sovereign Gate could serve as a substitute key, but out here in the real world that

wasn’t possible.

As it turned out, Raynie’s brother was one of the children the invaders ended up targeting in their

expanded search. Did they even know they were targeting the family of someone who went to class

with Zach and Zorian? Then again, even if they did, they may have thought it wouldn’t matter.

Raynie’s relationship with her family was not exactly the best. It wouldn’t be out of line to assume

she would be glad to have her brother out of the picture.

“I have to say, though, I’m surprised to see you here,” Zorian told Raynie. “I didn’t know you and Rea

knew each other.”

In fact, considering her disdain towards cat shifters, he would expect Raynie to purposely stay away

from Rea.

“Err, we don’t,” Raynie said, giving Rea an unsure look. “Detective Ikzeteri is the one who brought

me here. He thought she might be able to help.”

“We have received reports of a group targeting shifter children some time ago, so we have been in

contact with city shifters about the issue,” Haslush clarified, idly studying some kind of metal disc in

his hands, flipping it over from time to time. Zorian recognized it as one of the communication

devices the cultists and Ibasans sometimes used to coordinate their actions. Apparently the

detective hadn’t been sitting idly all this time. “Ms. Sashal was one of the… less adversarial contacts

we established during that time. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring your classmate here to see if she

had some insight into the situation.”

“I’m just a humble housewife, so how could I offer insight into a situation like that?” Rea said with a

slight smile, shaking her head lightly. “Still, the mother in me can’t help but empathize with the pain

of having your little brother stolen away by some heartless fiends. In another life, that could have

been my little Nochka in his place, no?”

She gave Zorian a piercing look, but he just raised his eyebrow at her in response.

“What are you implying?” he bluntly asked after a few seconds.

“I know you are connected to the evacuation effort that has been going on recently, and that it’s not

a minor connection either,” Rea told him with an exaggerated sigh. “Your scent is present on almost

everyone that has come to talk to me about getting Nochka and the rest of us out of the city. You

have several adult friends who all treat you with respect, and even a little deference, more like you’re

their leader than a precocious teenager. You are known as a diligent and hard-working student, but

you’ve been skipping all your classes for weeks now, doing gods know what.”

‘Stupid cat shifters and their superhuman sense of smell…’ Zorian grumbled internally. He was

pretty sure she wouldn’t have gotten suspicious and started connecting things if there were no scent

clues to attract her attention.

“Plus, when Ms. Sashal mentioned you, I couldn’t help but notice that your older brother Daimen,

who is said to be in Koth, has been very active in the city lately,” Haslush added from the side. He

placed the communication disc he was fiddling with in his pocket and focused his full attention on

Zorian. “Almost like some kind of emergency has popped up, forcing him to drop whatever he had

been doing to rush back to Eldemar, no?”

“Oh, come on. Me and my brother almost never interact with one another,” Zorian told him. “You

seem to have investigated me, surely you know that much? How would I know anything about what

he has been doing?”

“But you do know he’s here in Cyoria right now?” Haslush pressed.

“Of course. He dropped by to let me know he’s in the city. It’s just common courtesy. We are family,

after all,” Zorian said with a shrug. He saw no point in telling an obvious lie and pretending he never

saw Daimen recently.

“Do you two seriously believe Zorian is some kind of secret agent?” Raynie asked incredulously from

the side, her eyes shifting between the three of them in rapid succession.

“He definitely knows more than he lets on,” Rea shrugged. “Considering the situation, I figured it

wouldn’t hurt to try to wring some information out of him. It’s your brother’s life on the line here.”

“It, it doesn’t have to be,” Raynie tried anxiously. “Maybe it’s just a ransom thing and they just

haven’t gotten to state their demands. It’s–”

“You’re lying to yourself and you know it,” Rea said, giving her a knowing look. “When a shifter child

gets kidnapped, nine times out of ten it’s because the kidnappers want their blood essence. With so

much time having passed, it’s a question whether your brother is still alive at this point.”

Raynie paled at the reminder.

“Let’s not be all doom and gloom here. I’m sure her brother is still very much alive,” Haslush

hurriedly assured Raynie. “The ritual they are kidnapping all these children for is only due to happen

on the night of the summer festival. They need to keep her brother alive for a while yet.”

“Hm. If you say so,” Rea said. “Still, that date is just around the corner. If that’s our deadline, we

don’t really have much to work with.”

“Look, what do you even expect of me?” Zorian asked Rea, frowning at her slightly. “I don’t know

where any kidnapped children are being kept. Do you think I would just sit on that information if I

knew?”

It wasn’t like Zach and Zorian didn’t try to sabotage the primordial release ritual by denying the

invaders the needed sacrifices. The problem was that they couldn’t possibly round up every shifter

child on the continent and hide them away – no matter how thorough they were, their enemies could

always throw a wider net and go after some shifter community that Zach and Zorian didn’t even

know about. Jornak had spent decades preparing for this. Zorian suspected the power-mad lawyer

would have found the needed sacrifices no matter what they did.

Of course, if Zach and Zorian could locate the place where the shifter children were being kept, he

was all for launching a rescue operation. Without the needed sacrifices, Panaxeth couldn’t get free,

which would be an automatic win in a sense. It would be worth it to trigger the final battle before the

summer festival if they could inflict such a critical blow on their opposition. The problem was that

Zorian genuinely had no idea where Raynie’s brother could be held. It could very well be that those

children were being kept on Ulquaan Ibasa, Koth or some other distant place.

They could be anywhere on the planet, so finding them was like searching for a needle in a

haystack.

“I don’t know,” Rea admitted. “I know you’re involved with this somehow, but I don’t know in what

way. Maybe you really can’t do anything for poor Raynie here, but I’m hoping you can. I know she

thinks I’m just a scheming, skulking cat, but I really do want to help her.”

“What!?” Raynie protested. “I don’t–”

“It’s fine,” Rea said with a chuckle, gesturing with her hand towards Raynie to quiet her down. “I get

it. There’s too much bad blood between our peoples to let go on a whim. And I get why Zorian here

is feeling defensive and denying everything. I suppose it must feel like I led him here into some sort

of ambush.”

“Didn’t you?” Zorian asked, raising his eyebrow at her.

“No… well, yes, I guess I kind of did,” Rea admitted. “But considering you’ve been less than honest

with me these past few weeks, I think you should be able to stomach a little underhandedness.”

Zorian opened his mouth to defend himself but she raised her palm to stop him.

“I understand,” Rea said. “I’m not angry with you. You wanted to get your sister’s friend and her

family out of danger, but you didn’t want to reveal your secrets. I would have probably made the

same choice in your place. I’m just curious… was our first meeting really an accident?”

“Yes,” Zorian said easily. From a certain perspective it was true. “I’m not terribly social. If my little

sister wasn’t such a giant busybody and insisted I accompany Nochka to her home, the idea would

have never occurred to me. Getting Nochka’s bike out of the river so she could stop crying would be

enough for me.”

“Oh, is that what really happened?” Rea laughed. “You know, Nochka later told me a bunch of mean

boys were trying to take her bike away from her and you chased them off and then escorted her

home in case they came back.”

Oops. He should have synchronized stories with Nochka, apparently. He didn’t think it was a big

secret!

“Err, of course Nochka’s version is the correct one,” Zorian assured her. “Don’t mind my earlier

ramblings, I just got confused for a moment.”

“Sure, sure,” Rea said indulgently. “It was very heroic of you to defend my precious daughter from

random ruffians like that…”

For a while, Haslush and Raynie watched them curiously as they talked, not interrupting their

interaction. However, while Haslush was a grown man and an experienced detective, Raynie was

just a teenager and under a lot of stress at the moment. As such, she soon became impatient.

“You… Zorian, can you help me with this or not?” she loudly asked, impatience and frustration in her

voice.

Zorian stared at her for a second before opening his mouth to apologize and tell her he was just an

academy student and that there was nothing he could do to help her brother…

…but then he shut his mouth and started thinking about something.

It suddenly dawned on him that their enemies may have made a huge mistake when they kidnapped

Raynie’s brother.

After a few seconds, he focused back on the redheaded girl staring at him expectantly and stared

back straight into her eyes.

“You know what?” he told her. “I actually think there is something I can do. But I’m going to need

your help.”

Haslush silently leaned forward, his lazy-looking posture shifting into one of alertness.

“Me?” she asked, taken aback. She shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “But I’m just an academy

student.”

“So am I,” Zorian told her. “Here’s what we need to do…”

- break -

In the port city of Luja, there was a small abandoned warehouse. It was a dark, uninviting place – the

walls were moldy and crumbling, the floors were full of rat droppings and glass shards from broken

bottles, and the windows and doors were crudely barricaded with wooden boards. There were a

number of such places in Luja, as it was a large port town where trading companies were starting up

and going bankrupt on a regular basis. Most abandoned warehouses would eventually find a new

buyer and be fixed up into useable condition, but it wasn’t unusual for places like this to stay

unoccupied for months or even years as old owners tried to hold on to them in hopes of getting a

better price later.

As it happened though, this particular place held a dark secret. In the back of the warehouse,

shielded from view by a mountain of rotting crates and boards, there was a black egg-like object

attached to the floor with a mass of root-like tendrils. Spiral lines were etched into the black oval,

beginning at the bottom and reaching all the way to the tip. Perceptive individuals would note that

the oval almost looked like a giant black flower bulb on the verge of unfolding into a proper flower.

Or maybe a container, patiently waiting for the day it could unleash its contents upon its oblivious

surroundings.

Zach, Zorian and Alanic stood some distance away from the black oval, staring at it grimly. They

dared not approach, lest they activate the hidden wards and traps strategically placed around it.

“This is the fourth one we found,” Alanic commented. “One in Cyoria, two in Korsa, and now one in

Luja. Just how many wraith bombs did these people make?”

“There has to be more than one of these things in Cyoria,” Zorian commented. “There is no way they

would place two in Korsa and then leave only one for Cyoria. Korsa is important, but Cyoria is a far

more critical location. We just haven’t found the others.”

“There are probably a few in the capital city as well,” Zach said. “Jornak seems to have a downright

personal grudge with our country’s leadership. No way would he miss the chance to strike at them at

the heart of their power. Plus, considering what he said about Sulamnon and Falkrinea, there’s

bound to be a few of these bombs reserved for them as well…”

“We’ll never be able to find more than a fraction of them,” Alanic commented grimly. “This is going to

be a disaster. Entire city districts could end up being devoured by wraiths. The cleanup will take

years.”

He glanced at Zach and Zorian unhappily, but neither of them said anything. There was nothing to

say, really. They knew this as well.

“You still don’t know how to neutralize these things without triggering them?” Alanic asked with a

trace of resignation in his voice. He already suspected the answer he was going to get.

Sure enough, Zach and Zorian shook their heads in denial.

“They’re superbly well made,” Zorian told him. “Jornak must have spent ages refining the design in

the time loop. Any tampering I can think of will set one off, as well as alert our enemies to our

actions. The only way we can deal with these is by employing the same tactics we used on the

previous wraith bombs – set up a specialized ward field just outside the bomb’s defensive field and

try to contain the wraiths once they’re released. It should be effective, but I obviously haven’t tested

it, so…”

“I see,” Alanic said. He turned around towards the wraith bomb again, staring at it as if it that was

going to suddenly provide him with some new insights. “You don’t have to waste time on that. I’ll

contact the church higher ups and send them to perform another containment job here. I still say we

should trigger these things the moment we find them and deal with the consequences.”

“And I still say we shouldn’t,” Zorian argued back. “These wraith bombs can be harmlessly disarmed.

Jornak has a method to do so, I’m sure. I just need to rip it out of his head.”

“You really think you can do that?” Zach asked doubtfully. “We’d have to capture Jornak alive for that

to happen. That seems… difficult.”

“These wraith bombs are set to collectively go off the instant Jornak dies, so we want to avoid killing

him if at all possible, anyway,” Zorian pointed out. “Not to mention the other surprises he may have

left for us in the case of his death. For all his megalomania, he clearly realized there’s a real chance

he’s going to lose this conflict and made contingencies to account for it.”

Zach snorted derisively.

“Too many contingencies, if you ask me,” Zach said. “He put so much time into making sure

everyone suffers if he loses… what does he even gain out of that? It’s just petty. Sore loser.”

“Well, we were just discussing how we should try to capture him instead of killing him outright,”

Alanic noted. “So it’s not just pettiness. But yes, I get the feeling this is more than just about power

for Jornak. He wants revenge.”

“Revenge?” Zach asked, surprised. “On who?”

“Everyone,” Alanic said, still staring at the black oval in front of them.

The smooth, glossy surface of the object squirmed and shuddered, as if hundreds of worms were

moving just beneath the surface, before once again becoming still and quiet. Neither of the three

were disturbed at the sight. Wraith bombs did that sometimes. On occasion, one could even see a

faint outline of hands and faces on the surface of the oval – leering, maddened, crying, screaming,

begging – as if a person was desperately trying to break out from the inside before being forcibly

wrenched back into the depths of the device.

“Speaking from personal experience here, maybe?” Zach tried, giving Alanic a curious look.

Alanic didn’t say anything for a second.

“I was a very angry person when I was young,” he eventually said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

All three stayed silent for a few seconds, and Zorian quietly considered the battle-priest’s words.

Alanic had never told them about his past, and Zorian had always respected that. Truthfully, he

sometimes wondered why the man was so helpful to them in the first place. Did he see them as

young troublemakers that needed to be steered from a dark path, just like someone had once

steered him away from one? Or was he simply so discerning that he could accurately judge them

with even the slightest exposure? Whatever the answer, Zorian was grateful for the priest’s help and

had no desire to open old wounds if he didn’t have to.

As for the priest’s speculation of Jornak’s motivation… well, it could be true. Jornak – the old Jornak,

the one that Zorian had talked to in the time loop – was definitely bitter and resentful about having

his rightful inheritance stolen away from him. He could see how that could grow and fester once he

became a temporary looper and looked into the abyss of corruption and power plays that was

Altazian politics.

In the end, it didn’t even matter. No matter what reasons he had, Zorian would still have to defeat

him in the end.

“In somewhat unrelated news, Silverlake is gone,” Zorian suddenly spoke up, breaking the silence.

“The old Silverlake, that is. She just packed up everything portable out of her hideout and

disappeared one day. I don’t have the faintest idea where she went.”

“Do you think she’ll join the battle on our enemy’s side?” Zach asked, frowning.

“No, I doubt it,” Zorian said. “I think she just realized she was being heavily scrutinized by some very

powerful forces and got spooked. She’s a coward. No way she would dive into this conflict unless

someone arm-twisted her into it, and new Silverlake seemed like she wouldn’t support that.”

“If she’s really going to stay out of this, I’m fine with her going away,” Zach shrugged. “One less thing

to worry about.”

“I’ve heard reports that several mercenary companies from the neighboring countries have taken on

secretive, well-paid contracts,” Alanic said. “I’m not completely sure but I strongly suspect our

enemies have bought themselves some more soldiers for the final battle.”

Zach scowled at the news, uttering a nasty curse. Zorian’s reaction was more restrained, but his

face still darkened in response.

“The invaders have in general been getting restless and increasingly reckless as of late. Their

preparations might be nearing their end,” Alanic continued, becoming more animated. “What are we

waiting for? We should attack now and seize the initiative.”

“Well… the idea was always to be proactive and launch an attack before the day of the summer

festival,” Zach said, giving Zorian a questioning look. “However, Zorian keeps stalling, saying he

needs more time. So the timing depends on him, really.”

Alanic’s eyes softened a bit at the statement, his posture deflating.

“Ah, the situation with Zach, right?” he asked softly. “Did you find…?”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t find a solution no matter where I looked,” Zorian said with a wooden voice, not a

trace of emotion on his face.

“It’s fine,” Zach sighed. “I’ve already come to terms with things. I’ve already written my final will and

everything.”

“Right. In any case, you’re right. There is no point in waiting anymore. We’re just giving our enemies

more time. We’ll attack two days from now, the day before the summer festival. I still have one final

idea I want to try,” Zorian said.

“The shifter thing?” Zach asked curiously. “You really think that will work?”

“If it does, it will be a huge success,” Zorian pointed out.

“True,” Zach agreed. “It’s worth a try.”

- break -

Just outside of Cyoria, there was a spherical ritual room made by Zorian and his simulacrums.

Everything here was carefully crafted for only one purpose: to power up and enhance one particular

divination spell. All of the walls were densely packed with complicated series of lines and endless

rows of cryptic sigils, all made from precious metals and rare alchemical materials. The ground was

etched with no less than six blood red magical circles, and in the center stood a small golden cube

with a seemingly mundane pottery bowl. Hundreds of tiny white stars hung in the air, illuminating the

space. These were actually tiny dimensional gates that connected the room to various places in the

country and beyond.

Every place that was likely to house the kidnapped shifter children, in Zorian’s opinion.

Currently the ritual room contained Raynie, Haslush, Rea, and three of Zorian’s simulacrums. Two

simulacrums were disguised as adult mages, grim and silent, and were here for the sake of

pretending this was a secret government operation, rather than something Zorian set up himself.

Only one of them would be necessary for the ritual itself, but having two wouldn’t hurt and it would

be more realistic for something of this scale to require multiple people to execute.

The last simulacrum looked just like Zorian and pretended to be the original – his job was mostly to

stay next to Haslush and Rea and pretend to be normal. Though considering the looks on their faces

as they studied the ritual grounds, he felt he mostly failed at that already.

“My, mister Kazinski… I knew you couldn’t be normal, but I have to say I didn’t expect you’re

connected to people like this…” Rea said quietly. For the first time since he met her, she didn’t

sound confident and in control, and he instead sensed a trace of fear in her voice.

“You have no idea,” Haslush said, his voice quivering. His reaction was even more extreme than

Rea’s; he seemed downright horrified by what he was seeing. “More money went into this room than

my entire police department gets in a year. And it’s all meant to empower one specific spell that is

only useful for this one thing! The whole thing will be useless after today! The extravagance is mind-

boggling.”

Simulacrum number one shifted in place, a little uncomfortable. Zorian’s perspective on money was

a little skewed, yeah. This could be a real problem in the future, but at the moment he really didn’t

care. He’d pay twice this much if he thought it would help.

“You don’t even understand what this room means, do you?” Haslush asked Zorian, giving him a

strange look.

“No?” the simulacrum told him uncertainly.

And he really didn’t. Sure, the room was the best thing he could make on short notice, which

probably made it amazing by regular mages’ standards, but he was sure a country as big and

influential as Eldemar could pull this off.

It was kind of funny, really… the original went through so much trouble to make his abilities seem

more humble than they were and to attribute his achievements to some nebulous government

organization. He’d even succeeded. But in the end, the mere fact he was associated with people like

that was enough to alarm and awe Haslush and Rea.

He’d normally get a headache out of this, but he was just a simulacrum and wouldn’t even exist in a

couple of hours, so imagining Zorian having to deal with this in the future just made him laugh.

“Ah, forget it,” Haslush sighed. “You’re still too young and inexperienced. You’re tangling with some

really dangerous stuff, is all I’m going to say.”

“Don’t I know it,” the simulacrum mumbled.

Raynie, on the other hand, was currently sitting in the middle of the ritual room, next to the golden

cube and the bowl, taking deep breaths to calm herself. She was chanting some sort of song to

herself in a language Zorian’s simulacrum couldn’t recognize. It was probably the language of her

tribe. The two disguised simulacrums were also sitting around the cube, forming a triangular

formation around it together with Raynie. They were naturally far more calm and collected, and

patiently waited for Raynie to psych herself for the upcoming ritual.

The pressure on her was enormous. This ritual would succeed or fail purely based on how she

performed. Simulacrum number one was certain his fellow simulacrums would perform their part of

the ritual flawlessly, but the core part of the divination ritual was something only Raynie could do…

because it was her brother they were trying to track down with the spell.

Divination spells were more effective the more they had to work with. In case of tracking spells, the

caster needed something connected to the target. A personal item, a drop of blood, things like that.

They were even more effective if the caster was personally connected to the target in some way: if

they had personally spoken to the target at some point, if they were friends with them, or if they were

married to one another.

As far as connections go, though, there were few things more potent than being literal family: parent

and child, brother and sister.

And more potent still was to use literal blood magic to form a resonance between their common

bloodline.

Finally, there was the primordial essence that existed in the blood of every shifter. Raynie was

already a teenager, so most of that primordial essence was gone, integrated into her body and soul.

However, traces of it should remain still. Zorian had spent quite some time with the leaders of the

Cult of the World Dragon, studying their method of releasing Panaxeth, and he knew how they used

primordial essence to resonate with the one in the prison and act as a key. The same method could

be used to fool any mortal defensive ward or anti-divination method.

Raynie and her brother were siblings. Even if they had never interacted much, the link between them

was strong. Blood magic could make it even stronger. They also both had primordial essence in their

blood, and that could be used to bypass any form of divination defense the invaders put up around

her brother and the rest of the sacrifices.

If the ritual they were about to undertake successfully located Raynie’s brother, Zach and Zorian

could liberate all the shifter children the invaders gathered during the past few weeks. Not only did

that mean doing a good deed and saving a bunch of children from a gruesome death, it would also

irreparably sabotage the Panaxeth release ritual. There was only one day before the summer

festival. There was no way that the invaders could gather another batch of sacrifices in that short of

a time.

There were a lot of ways the ritual could fail, even if they executed it flawlessly. For one thing, Zorian

couldn’t blanket the entire planet with dimensional gates, no matter how small they were. Not even

close. It was possible he had failed to pick the right place to search at, in which case all of this was

for naught. It was also possible that the invaders were keeping all the kidnapped children separated

until the final moment, in which case they will just end up saving Raynie’s brother and no one else.

Their enemies also may have gathered enough spare children to form a second group, in which

case they could still try to release Panaxeth as normal.

Zorian had a good feeling about this, though. This could work, he was sure of it. The only question

now was whether Raynie was capable of doing her part.

The necessary blood magic itself wasn’t that difficult. Blood magic was famously easy to perform.

Too easy, according to some. Additionally, blood magic tracking spells were a very common use of

blood magic and there was no need for Zorian to reinvent the wheel to make one. There were plenty

of tried and true methods that Raynie could use for her attempt.

It was still blood magic, however. Raynie would have to ritually cut herself during the casting, and

remain clearheaded despite the resulting pain. The mana shaping requirements for successful

casting were low, but Raynie was a total beginner when it came to magic, so even that may be too

much for her. Finally, whether she succeeded or failed, she would be severely weakened for at least

a week after the attempt, and the traces of primordial essence in her blood would be spent.

She had one try. Not one more. If she made even a single mistake, the whole ritual would be ruined,

and that would be it.

So Zorian’s simulacrums patiently waited, not trying to hurry her up in any way.

Likewise, on the edge of the ritual room, Rea, Haslush and the simulacrum that actually looked like

Zorian patiently waited as well.

Well, simulacrum number one patiently waited. Haslush and Rea were clearly anxious as hell about

the eventual result of the ritual.

“The center of the ritual circle is protected from sounds, right?” Haslush softly asked simulacrum

number one. “They can’t hear us if we talk?”

“Yes,” the simulacrum calmly said. “It’s also protected against outside mana intrusion and the like.

Unless you really go out of the way to make yourself known, you shouldn’t be able to disturb them.”

Of course, simulacrum number one was always mentally connected with his fellow simulacrums and

the original, but the two simulacrums participating in the ritual were too experienced and skilled to be

distracted by something like that.

“What’s up with you, kid?” Haslush complained, glaring at him slightly. “Are you made of ice or

something?”

“I’m just naturally stoic,” the simulacrum bragged, puffing his chest up proudly. “It’s okay, old man,

you’ll learn how to be as cool as me one of these days.”

Haslush clacked his tongue at the response and no longer bothered to talk to him.

“I’ve looked into your classmate’s family situation,” Rea commented idly.

“Oh?” the simulacrum said, raising an eyebrow at her.

“It seems Raynie’s relationship with her family is… less than harmonious,” Rea said, cocking her

head to the side and closing her eyes as if listening to something. “Her brother essentially replaced

her as the clan heir when he was born. There are rumors that she was extremely resentful about it.”

Simulacrum number one said nothing.

“You knew,” Rea said after a while.

“Yeah,” the simulacrum admitted. “Yeah, I did.”

“You think she’s going to purposely botch the spell?” Haslush asked, frowning.

“Quite the contrary,” Rea said calmly, shaking her head. “I think she’s desperate for it to succeed.

She probably wished ill on her brother a lot, and now that it finally happened she feels guilty and

responsible for it. Shifter tribes have a somewhat superstitious view of curses. Wishing misfortune to

someone in your head is not just harmless catharsis to a lot of them.”

“That’s true for a lot of regular people, too,” Haslush shrugged. “It’s just mages that really disdain

that kind of thinking.”

Rea hummed thoughtfully, but did not respond. The whole group suddenly became silent as it

became obvious that Raynie was finally ready to begin with the ritual.

The red-headed wolf shifter started chanting, softly at first but getting more confident as time went

on. Her hand trembled as she raised a dagger above her palm and slashed into it once, twice,

thrice… the motions were crude and she cut a little more deeply than was really necessary, but

simulacrum number one supposed that was better than being too timid.

She held her bloodied hand above the simple-looking pottery bowl and dropped blood into it. The

bowl promptly lit up with glowing blood red lines and diagrams, and a barely perceptible magical

pulse spread out from the golden cube upon which the bowl sat. The white stars above them

dimmed and brightened like a hundred tiny hearts.

Thin, hair-like streams of blood, barely visible from where simulacrum number one was standing,

rose from the bowl and reached for the tiny dimensional gates above it. Raynie loudly gasped and

swayed unsteadily as some of her life force left her, some of the threads reaching for the wounds on

her hand like dozens of hungry leeches. Overwhelmed by the pain and vertigo, she dropped her

dagger and almost collapsed face-first into the bowl in front of her, but with the support of two

disguised simulacrums and her own willpower she managed to retain consciousness. Gritting her

teeth, she started slowly making gestures with her healthy hand.

Finally the last gesture of the spell was made and everything snapped into place. The dimensional

gates floating above them shone with blinding light, forcing Haslush and Rea to shield their eyes,

and a flood of information entered the minds of the three simulacrums present.

So much information. Hundreds of places, most of them completely disconnected from each other,

all of them mixing together into a giant incomprehensible mess. The spell, too vast in scope,

struggled to narrow down the search on its own. It passed the task to the caster of the spell. If

Raynie was doing this alone, she would have outright failed here… a beginner mage simply wasn’t

capable of controlling a spell of this sophistication and magnitude. But she wasn’t doing this alone.

Zorian’s simulacrums were present, and they were capable. In fact, a single one of them would have

sufficed. Having three of them do this together was just overkill.

After a few seconds, simulacrum number one smiled. Almost immediately afterwards, a quick

message was sent to the original by all three simulacrums. It only consisted of a single word.

“Success,” simulacrum number one mumbled.

- break -

Sitting next to a table full of battle maps, surrounded by Zach, Xvim, Alanic and the rest of the

members of their little conspiracy, Zorian suddenly became alert and cleared his throat to get the

attention of other people in the room. They immediately stopped whatever argument they were

having and turned to him.

“We found them,” Zorian said. “Start the attack.”

- break -

On a peaceful and sunny day, just one day before the summer festival, the city of Cyoria suddenly

went to hell. It was around noon when, without warning, dozens of places in the city suddenly

launched volleys of magical artillery projectiles to some unseen targets just outside the city. These

targets, almost as if they had been expecting something like this might happen, immediately

responded with an artillery barrage of their own. In a matter of minutes, the city was burning.

Numerous buildings had been partially or completely destroyed, and rogue fire elementals started

wandering the city, setting everything they encountered ablaze. Neither of the two sides were done

yet, though, and the exchange of magical artillery continued on for quite some time.

Then the monsters came. Skeletons, war trolls, giant lizards, massive flocks of iron beaks… all of

these came pouring out of the local underworld, spreading chaos as they went. A lot of these

invading monsters met a grisly end, triggering hidden traps when they tried to move through upper

levels of Cyoria’s underworld, almost as if someone had foreseen their invasion routes. A lot more

were held back in the depths of the earth, fighting some unseen enemy beneath the city. But even

the fraction of the forces that reached the surface was nothing to scoff at.

The final battle had begun. Soon, the leaders of the two opposing forces would clash as well.

Chapter 101

The Switch

Cyoria was burning. A number of important buildings had been leveled to the ground by the initial

artillery exchange, and several sections of the city were ablaze with sapient fire that deliberately

sought to burn as much of the city as possible. The invading soldiers did not help matters, as they

had a tendency to set buildings ablaze unless there were defending forces to stop them from running

amok.

Despite this, Zorian felt the situation was actually pretty good. Based on the previous invasions he

had witnessed in the time loop, he had expected the city to suffer far more than it had so far. The city

leadership was extremely quick to react and organize itself, despite the fact that the city hall and

main barracks got totally destroyed early on, and the defending forces were far better equipped than

he remembered. This was only partially the result of Zach and Zorian's machinations – it seemed

that despite the two sides’ agreement to keep things relatively secret and low-key, some awareness

of what was happening still ended up trickling down to Cyoria's authorities.

That was good. Zach and Zorian had more important battles to fight, and couldn't afford to come to

the aid of the city at this time. It was up to the city itself to douse the fires before they went out of

control, and repulse the invaders pouring out of tunnels beneath the city.

Was it cold-hearted of them to leave Cyoria entirely to its own devices in a time like this? A little.

However, Zorian firmly believed that what they were doing was the best way to minimize the number

of casualties. Getting involved in the city fighting would no doubt cause Quatach-Ichl and other

invasion leaders to make their own appearance there as well. It was not in the interest of Cyoria and

its inhabitants to have a bunch of ultra-powerful mages duking it out in the city streets.

No, it was far better to go on the offense against the invaders and force the high-level mage fights to

happen elsewhere. Somewhere where the invaders would have to worry about collateral damage.

This was why one of Zorian's simulacrums was leading a force composed of golems, Alanic's

recruits, and mind-controlled monsters straight towards the Ibasan underground base. The base

held the dimensional gate through which the Ibasan forces intended to retreat once their goals had

been achieved, which meant it had to be held at all costs.

Thus, the moment the invaders realized there was a powerful army heading towards their retreat

point, they had no choice but to redirect most of their forces to try and stop them. The defenders on

the surface probably didn't realize this, but they were fighting a mere fraction of the invading

enemies, because most of them were currently busy fighting Zorian's army in the tunnels below.

Well, the original Zorian was busy with other matters entirely, so it was more accurate to say they

were fighting an army led by his simulacrum... but on this particular day, it hardly mattered. Zorian

and his simulacrums were truly one, their minds fused together to an unprecedented degree. He felt

less like a man with a couple of copies running around, and more like a single mind controlling

multiple bodies. It was the culmination of all his research into the way Princess and the cephalic rat

swarms functioned, and he previously did not dare use it outside of a testing chamber. He was afraid

of such magic warping his personality and sense of self, especially if used on a regular basis, but

desperate times called for desperate measures.

It should be safe to use it just this once.

Hopefully.

Currently, Zorian’s simulacrum body advanced confidently towards the mass of enemies blocking

the nearby tunnel entrance, unintimidated by their attempt at setting up a blockade. His army,

composed of several hundred golems of various sizes, almost a hundred mages that Alanic recruited

for their cause, and several hundred hook goblins and other Dungeon denizens, swarmed behind

him, waiting for orders.

A pair of shining projectiles, one red, one blue, came flying at him from the enemy barricade ahead.

They shone so bright they were painful to look at, as their flight created a startlingly loud screaming

sound as they homed in on Zorian. He did not even bother to defend himself; it would be a waste of

his limited mana. The huge bodyguard golem that never left his side raised its massive hands in

front of Zorian and slapped down the incoming spells like a pair of annoying flies.

They exploded into a pair of blinding explosions that somehow strengthened and reinforced each

other, becoming stronger than the sum of their parts, but it simply wasn’t enough. The defensive

wards of the massive bodyguard golem harmlessly neutralized the blast, leaving Zorian completely

untouched.

The golem was left without so much as a scratch, as well.

Without saying anything, and before the explosion was even fully over, Zorian pointed the huge

magical rifle in his hands at one of the mages that launched the attack and fired. The bullet reached

the target at supersonic speeds, effortlessly punching through the defensive wards the Ibasans put

on their little barricade, hitting the enemy mage in the chest before he could put up any sort of

defense. It wasn’t a killing blow, but the mage was out of the fight for the foreseeable future, so it

might as well have been. Zorian coldly turned his rifle towards the other mage responsible for the

attack, ignoring the barrage of spells coming his way or the target’s frantic attempts to coat himself in

as many shielding spells as humanly possible.

More than a dozen nearby golems suddenly turned towards Zorian’s target, pointing their own heavy

rifles at him in a single, synchronized motion.

The mage’s shields blocked the first five bullets. Then the other ten or so tore into him and killed him

on the spot.

As for the barrage of weak spells that was meant to distract him, it was unceremoniously blocked by

a bunch of heavily-built golems that stepped up in front of him to soak them up with their tough

bodies and well-made defensive wards.

Zorian gave them a thought, and a screeching swarm of hook goblins, giant centipedes, and cave

lizards surged forward and charged the enemy position. The enemy responded by sending hordes of

skeletons and zombies forward, and the two groups of expendable meat shields crashed against

each other in the middle of the battlefield, attempting to overpower the other.

However, it quickly became obvious that the undead were losing. They may have been fearless, but

they were ultimately just a mindless mob. Zorian’s monster swarm, on the other hand, was more

advanced than it appeared. This wasn’t the first time Zorian used mind-controlled monsters as meat

shields and shock troopers like this, and his methods had evolved greatly over time. His monsters no

longer mindlessly charged forward, getting into each other’s way and spreading their attacks thin

over the entire battlefield, like they did in the past. Instead, they worked together like a cephalic rat

swarm, sharing senses, focusing attacks on perceived weak points, ganging up on tough opponents,

and sacrificing themselves for the good of the whole if necessary.

Suddenly, Zorian sensed ten mental and soul signatures rapidly moving towards them from all sides,

invisibly tunneling towards the back of his army through solid stone.

Rock worms. Zorian scoffed inwardly and telepathically ordered the rest of the army to advance

forward. The golems mindlessly obeyed, of course, but some of Alanic’s human volunteers visibly

flinched at the mental command, still unused to this form of communication and a little fearful of him.

They did obey in the end, though, and this was all that mattered. He had avoided using them so far,

both because he was trying to preserve their strength for a battle that really mattered and because

he was still very uncomfortable with ordering people into battles where some of them were

guaranteed to die. Unlike the mindless golems and the animal-level monsters that made up the rest

of his army, the human mages and soldiers were not expendable.

The Ibasans in front of them sent out war trolls to charge out and meet them, probably hoping to

capitalize on the moment of shock when the rock worms suddenly burst out of the ground and

attacked them. That wouldn’t be happening, of course. Silverlake must have informed Jornak about

Zorian’s potent mind magic capabilities, but either the information never trickled down to the people

commanding the troops or they dismissed them as ridiculous, or else they would never dare use a

ploy like this against him.

It happened in an instant. The charging line of war trolls was only moments away from crashing into

the line of battle golems in front of them, perfectly synchronized with the tunneling rock worms that

were just about to emerge in the middle of Zorian’s army. Whoever was commanding the situation

really knew how to arrange things to deal the maximum amount of damage and confusion in an

enemy, and Zorian could literally sense the glee and anticipation in the minds of Ibasan mages as

they waited with bated breaths for the inevitable catastrophe to befall the enemy…

…and then Zorian suddenly reached out to the ten approaching rock worms with his mind, tearing

through the Ibasan mind-control schemes like they were made of cobwebs, and commanded them to

switch targets.

And so they did. Just before the golems and war trolls were about to clash, eight of the rock worms

burst out of the floor and ceiling, tackling the biggest, meanest-looking trolls to the ground and

breaking their momentum. When the two groups finally met, the war troll regiment immediately

crumbled before the pitiless advance of metal puppets. Tougher than steel and armed with scorching

hot blades specifically designed to neutralize the trolls’ natural regeneration, the golems wouldn’t

have had an issue even without the rock worms’ help. With them distracting the leaders of the war

trolls regiment, the war trolls had no chance.

Zorian kept advancing forward. In fact, he had never stopped doing so. As he got closer to the battle

between the golems and war trolls, one of the war troll leaders stumbled in close to him, a rock worm

stubbornly wrapped around him like a giant snake. The rock worm kept snapping its massive jaws at

the war troll’s face, while the war troll used both hands to desperately keep it at bay. Zorian gave a

command to his huge bodyguard golem, and the metal puppet reached down with one of its massive

hands, grabbed the war troll by its left leg and picked it up in the air.

The rock worm immediately let go of the troll and found another target to menace, as the massive

golem started to spin the war troll above its head a few times and then hurled it straight at the

barricade that the Ibasans had set up in Zorian’s path.

It wouldn’t have been a very effective attack normally, but the Ibasans were a bit busy at the

moment. The last two rock worms that Zorian didn’t send after the war trolls were instead pointed at

the mages normally responsible for commanding them. Additionally, Zorian’s monster horde had

mostly dismembered the undead chaff sent to stop them and were currently attacking every

available weak point of the barricade in the attempt to break through. As such, they could do nothing

but watch as their own war trolls, large even by troll standards and clad in heavy steel armor, spun

through the air and physically slammed into the boxy stone cube that served as the core of the

barricade’s defensive wards.

The cube shattered into hundreds of pieces, and the wards covering the fortification immediately

went down with it. Without breaking his stride, Zorian retrieved the bulky grenade launcher gun from

his back and fired three frost grenades straight into the biggest clumps of Ibasan mages he could

see. Barely a moment afterwards, his human underlings joined him in the attack, unwilling to let such

an obvious opportunity go to waste, and a wave of energy spells, bullets, and grenades came raining

down on the Ibasans.

Demoralized by their repeated failures, the Ibasan forces abandoned their blockade and ran. Zorian

was about to command his forces to give chase and thin down their forces when a familiar figure

materialized in the air in front of him.

It was a floating humanoid wearing a scarlet red robe, his face hidden beneath a hood that masked

his features under a veil of darkness.

Even after unmasking himself to them, Jornak still used his Red Robe outfit to face them.

“You were hiding your abilities when we fought earlier,” said Jornak, idly blocking a handful of bullets

Zorian’s soldiers had fired at him while simultaneously firing a streak of lightning back at them.

The lightning line hit the first target in an instant, killing him on the spot, before arcing from target to

target five more times, claiming three more lives and disabling two more. Zorian immediately ordered

them all to withdraw. They might have held some usefulness as a distraction, but they would have to

die in droves to achieve that, and he didn’t want that on his soul.

The Jornak in front of him was just a simulacrum anyway, so it wasn’t like they would accomplish

much by putting him down.

“We both hid our true abilities,” Zorian told him, firing a few rounds from his rifle at the floating figure

without missing a beat. Jornak blocked them just as easily as he did the bullets from before, looking

completely unconcerned. Some kind of shield specialized in defending against physical attacks like

bullets? “There is nothing strange or unexpected about that.”

“I really hate those things,” Jornak commented. Zorian was pretty sure he was talking about the rifle

in his hands. “They caused so much grief and suffering. I wish they were never invented. I’d certainly

never use one of those unless I had no choice. I believe Zach feels the same. That’s why it surprised

me so much when you used one against me the first time we fought. In a way, you’re even more

honorless than I am.”

Zorian did not feel like being lectured to by someone like Jornak, so he simply ordered his golems to

attack and prepared to cast a spell. He didn’t think the man was really here for a philosophical

discussion anyway – he probably just wanted to stall Zorian with pointless talk while the enemy

forces converged together and regrouped.

Almost simultaneously, both of them hasted themselves in an attempt to catch each other off-guard

and let loose three spells each. The walls of the tunnels around them instantly melted, warped, and

shattered. They were both unharmed for it. A faint shockwave of the clash propagated itself to the

spot where Zorian’s human army had retreated, prompting them to fearfully retreat even further.

Zorian frowned, looking at the red robed figure in front of him. Truthfully, he had known something

like this would happen when he started this attack. He would have been seriously worried if

someone hadn’t shown up to stop him, since he would soon be approaching the Ibasan base. Their

enemies had to stop him before he could shut down the dimensional portal they used to shuffle their

forces from place to place. Without it, the invasion was finished before it even began.

The trouble was, the original was already fighting elsewhere, and that fight was way more important

than this one. This was also the reason why the only serious opposition their enemies had sent to

stop him was one of Jornak’s simulacrums – they were already pressed elsewhere and couldn’t

spare anyone else.

Truthfully, this whole operation was a bit of a deliberate distraction. He had never really expected to

take the Ibasan base, because most of their forces were busy elsewhere. His main purpose was to

lessen the pressure on the city and to threaten the Ibasan retreat point to the point where they would

be forced to send someone important to defend it. Both of the goals had been pretty much achieved.

The very fact that Jornak had been forced to send one of his simulacrums and waste his mana on

this was a success. At this point, it would serve his purposes just fine to simply drag this fight out as

much as possible, wasting Jornak’s mana and preventing him from fully committing elsewhere.

Or he could take a risk and try to eliminate the simulacrum for real – something that would force the

enemy to shift even more resources to this conflict, but had a high chance of blowing up in his face if

his simulacrum ended up being destroyed in the clash. All of the human recruits that followed him to

this place would die soon afterwards, and the Ibasans would once again be free to focus their effort

on the city above.

The indecision only lasted for a moment. He swiftly ordered his golem army into motion and then

created a swarm of tiny projectiles around him. Each one was smaller than his thumb and glowed

with bright orange light, circling around him like a river of stars. Though seemingly weak, each of the

little orange stars contained the force of a fully-powered fireball. They were fast, maneuverable, and

Zorian could hold them in reserve until he needed them. He immediately sent three of them at

Jornak on curved, complicated trajectories and then followed them up with a lance of force aimed

straight at his head.

Jornak’s reaction to the small army of golems trying to tackle him surprised Zorian, however. Rather

than use magic to evade them or waste a huge amount of mana to batter their spell-resistant bodies,

he simply… punched them away. The simulacrum Jornak sent here was clearly special in some way

that Zorian did not understand, because he possessed downright incomprehensible physical

strength. His mere punches sent man-sized golems flying away like discarded dolls, and a well-

placed kick could easily snap a knee joint and render the golem useless. Worse, Jornak’s

simulacrum seemed able to regenerate its ectoplasmic body with minimal effort on his part. Twice

Zorian managed to severely damage him, blowing off his arm once and piercing a big hole with a

force lance in his torso the other time, and in both cases the damage went away in mere seconds.

Zorian ordered his bodyguard golem to join the fray, hoping to use its size and powerful wards to

simply overpower Jornak with raw strength, but this quickly backfired. Jornak took out three

grenades from his pocket and threw them above his head before teleporting out of the huge golem’s

reach. Before Zorian could order it to withdraw, the grenades detonated without the slightest sound.

A web of hair-thin dimensional fractures flashed faintly in the air, space itself shattering before the

magical grenade blast, and enveloped the golem.

As potent as the great golem’s defenses were, very few things could stand up to the cutting power of

dimensional fractures. The thin black lines went through the golem’s bulk with hardly any resistance,

snuffing out its animation core and cutting up its bulk into hundreds of tiny pieces.

Zorian could only helplessly watch as his creation, one which had been crucial in his coming this far

so easily, fell apart in front of his eyes.

Okay, now he was kind of angry.

He launched all of the fire stars he had circling him straight at Jornak’s simulacrum, forcing him onto

the defensive, and then physically charged straight at him. The enemy simulacrum hesitated for a

second, no doubt wondering what had possessed Zorian to do something that stupid, before

deciding this was too good of a chance to pass up. He charged as well, rushing to meet Zorian head

on. Jornak’s simulacrum was clearly far more powerful up close than Zorian’s.

Just before they slammed into each other, Jornak’s whole body became shrouded in arcing red

electricity that reminded Zorian of Quatach-Ichl’s favorite spell. In a blindingly fast movement,

Jornak’s hand flashed forward and punched straight through the chest of Zorian’s simulacrum.

Despite being made out of metal and alchemically treated materials, his body provided very little

resistance before the ectoplasmic hand, which passed through him like a very sharp blade.

Damaging red lightning immediately began spreading itself through the chest cavity of the

simulacrum, irreparably damaging sensitive components.

Zorian ignored the damage. Instead, he reached out with both hands and firmly gripped the hand

sticking out of his chest. Realizing that something was wrong, Jornak’s simulacrum tried to wrench

its hand free of the grasp, but he wasn’t fast enough. Hundreds of mana threads erupted out of

Zorian’s palms, burrowing themselves into Jornak’s ectoplasmic flesh.

Jornak’s simulacrum shuddered and twitched as it tried to move, but failed to wrench itself out of

Zorian’s grasp. Even as Zorian’s chest started to flake off around the hand stuck in it, internal

components seeping out as fine black sand, Jornak’s own form was getting blurrier and more

indistinct. Moreover, the degradation of Jornak’s simulacrum was clearly progressing faster than that

of Zorian’s own puppet body, more and more mana threads spreading throughout its ectoplasmic

form and disrupting it on a fundamental level.

“You…” Jornak croaked incredulously, before his entire body, red cloak and all, warped and flickered

like a badly-made illusion and collapsed into smoke.

Zorian’s own simulacrum body then promptly collapsed on the floor, now that Jornak’s hand was no

longer keeping his body standing. His internals were far too ruined for him to move his limbs

anymore, and just about the only thing he could still move was his head.

Eventually, the human soldiers under his command decided to check things out and cautiously

approached the place of the battle.

“Hey,” Zorian suddenly called out from the ground, where his crumpled simulacrum body lay

motionless. A bunch of people looked at themselves before the closest soldier pointed to himself

curiously. “Yeah, you with the beard. Cut off my head.”

“I beg your pardon?” The man asked, shocked.

“I can’t move my body so it’s mostly just useless weight at this point. Sadly, none of my golems are

too good at fine manual dexterity, so it’s up to you to cut off my head and carry it with you. You’ll be

my official head carrier from now on.”

The man gave the body on the floor a strange look before sighing.

“This is not what I signed up for,” he mumbled under his breath.

- break -

At the same time, one Zorian was fighting in the tunnels beneath Cyoria, but he was also in Koth,

preparing to participate in the assault on the Ibasan base there. Jornak had made a portal link to

Koth earlier in the month, in order to eventually take Zorian’s friends and family hostage, and now

there was a small Ibasan base hidden out there in the jungle, relatively close to the Taramatula

estate.

Zorian couldn’t tell if Jornak still placed any hopes on this plan. On one hand, the base was still there

and the portal connection was not shut down – surely their enemies would not have done this if they

knew that Zorian had opted out of using the Taramatula estate as his sanctuary? On the other hand,

the base looked pretty small and understaffed to Zorian’s eyes. Just a single regiment of war trolls

and a small horde of undead, led by a handful of human mages? This was a pretty half-hearted

operation.

Or that’s what he thought, anyway. Orissa and the other Taramatula around him apparently did not

share his sentiments.

“What a nasty surprise these people had planned for us. This would have been a disaster if the

attackers had caught us off guard,” Orissa commented.

“I’ve seen you fight,” Zorian said, frowning. “A House with several dozen mages like you should have

no problems repulsing a force like this, even if the war trolls and undead are more resistant to bee

attacks than most targets.”

Since most of their attention was placed elsewhere, Zorian was here only as a simulacrum.

Moreover, he did not have an army of golems with him like the simulacrum beneath Cyoria did. He

was here more as an advisor than anything – the Taramatula would be the ones who did all the

fighting.

“You did?” Orissa asked curiously. “How strange. I don’t remember fighting anyone while you were

around. Still, while I thank you for the compliments, the simple counterpoint to your claim is that our

House doesn’t have several dozen mages like me. I am very much exceptional, both in talent and the

amount of resources that have been spent on me. Most of the members of our House aren’t

particularly good at fighting to begin with. Most of them are primarily trackers and surveyors, using

their bees purely to find things and fighting only as a last resort.”

“Ah,” said Zorian, wincing a little internally. Yes, he probably shouldn’t take someone like Orissa to

be the benchmark for your average member of the House. “So why did you insist on making this

attack, then? Why not just defend your estate like I advised you to?”

“There is too much risk involved in that,” Orissa said. “If our main hives are damaged in the fighting,

it would be a huge blow to our operations. But more importantly… the elders want that portal.”

Zorian raised his eyebrow at her. The portal… of course. The base Jornak made for this operation

connected Koth directly to Altazia, bridging the vast distances between two continents with a

permanent dimensional connection. The value of this was incalculable.

“And… you think you can take out this force, which you aren’t sure you could defend against

effectively, in such a way that you can seize the portal intact?” Zorian asked her curiously.

“There is a chance, yes,” Orissa told him with a mysterious smile. “In a direct fight, I wouldn’t be too

confident of my chances, but thanks to your information we have a chance to take them off guard. If

we can sneak enough bees into their base without them noticing, then their first indication of an

impending attack will consist of getting swarmed by hundreds of magical bees each.”

“You’d have to make sure to get them all or the whole thing will fail,” Zorian pointed out. “If even one

survives the initial attack, he will close the portal.”

“Of course,” Orissa said. “That’s why it’s important to be patient and do this slowly. You said there

was no rush, yes?”

“None,” Zorian admitted. This fight was relatively irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If the

Taramatula could really seize the portal, Zorian supposed they could send in some of their forces to

the other side to assist them, but that was unlikely to be decisive in any way. “In fact, I wholly

support your decision to be careful.”

“Less chance of your needing to pull us out of the fire if we flounder?” Orissa asked knowingly.

“I’m just a moderately talented teenager,” Zorian said. “I could hardly turn the tide of battle all on my

own.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Orissa said. “How many living people did you say were in the base?”

“Twenty eight,” Zorian said with barely a thought. He then quickly pointed out to her where exactly

everyone currently was so her forces wouldn’t waste time scouting the base for no reason.

“You know exactly where everyone in that base is, even from this distance,” Orissa said lightly. “But

you’re just a moderately talented teenager? Your brother should have taught you how to lie better.”

“It’s just a standard mind sense that all psychic people have,” Zorian protested. “Just an innate

ability, nothing more.”

“I’m quite sure that Daimen couldn’t replicate what you just did, despite being way older than you,”

Orissa said.

Ugh. Why was he so bad at this ‘look relatively normal’ thing? This was going to be a real problem in

the future, he could already tell…

“You know what? I’m shutting up now,” Zorian sighed. “You have a surprise attack to plan, so you

should get on that, and I’ll… just stand on the sidelines and let the adults handle everything from

now on. Please protect me, Daimen’s fiancée. My brother will never forgive you if you get his

beloved little brother killed.”

She set loose some of her bees on him for that.

- break -

Zorian was in the tunnels beneath Cyoria, he was in Koth, and he was even in the academy in

Cyoria, setting up contingencies in case things failed to develop as they hoped.

But mostly he was at Iasku’s Mansion.

In fact, Zach, Xvim, Alanic, Daimen, and most of their forces were also at Iasku’s Mansion…

because that’s where the Ibasans held their kidnapped shifter children.

It was a bit of an obvious choice, in retrospect. It was heavily defended, it was really far from any

other civilization, and it had a gate connection to the Ibasan base beneath Cyoria.

However, there had been lots of ‘obvious choices’ when it came to the place where the Ibasans held

the shifter children, and the cost of attacking Iasku Mansion was huge. It wasn’t something they

would be willing to commit to unless they knew there was something of critical importance there.

Well, now they knew, and the mansion and its surroundings had become the site of a bitter battle.

Zorian’s real body was here, standing on the back of Princess as the forest burned and shuddered

around them. Thousands upon thousands of undead were charging at them, ranging from simple

undead boars to towering mountains of stitched up flesh that could rival even the biggest of Zorian’s

golems in size. Zorian’s golems took care of most of them, tearing into them with grenade throwers

and dismembering them with giant blades, but there were just too many of them…

Fortunately, Princess was unafraid of the horde of the walking dead, and her eight heads were ever-

vigilant. Any undead that dared approach her was immediately dealt with, without Zorian having to

do anything.

Immediately behind the undead horde was a rapidly approaching mass of monsters – mostly war

trolls and winter wolves, with a huge swarm of iron beaks hovering above them, cawing ominously.

Some rock worms were moving invisibly beneath the surface of the earth, but their controllers were

wiser than the ones beneath Cyoria and made sure the worms avoided Zorian like a plague and

stayed as far away from him as possible.

And in the distance, perched on the roof of the mansion, were three dragons staring intently at them.

Three living, perfectly healthy dragons, completely unrelated to the skeletal monstrosity hidden in the

depths of Iasku Mansion.

Oganj and his two students, Zorian was sure. They weren’t doing anything for now, but Zorian knew

this wouldn’t last as they got closer to the mansion itself.

The attack was meant to be a surprise, but their enemies had clearly been ready for them anyway.

Well. It would have been nice to catch their enemies completely off-guard, but he had never really

thought this would be an easy battle, anyway.

After some back and forth with Zach, Zorian gave a silent signal to the menacing mass of iron beaks

in the sky and suddenly the whole flock swerved to the side as one, before letting loose a massive

volley of knife-like feathers at a seemingly empty patch of land.

Distant screams filled the air as the mages who were moving there under the cover of invisibility

suddenly came under attack by the forces they believed were on their side.

Before the enemy mages could regroup, Zorian ordered Princess to charge forward towards the

mansion. She did so with relish, but not before letting loose a challenging roar from all eight of her

heads at the trio of dragons in the distance. Clearly riled up by the provocation, one of the dragons

shook and almost flew up in the air to intercept her, but the biggest of the dragons casually slapped

him down with his tail and gave him a silent glare. Visibly chastised, the smaller dragon immediately

backed down.

Zorian was impressed. Although Oganj was clearly the biggest and meanest of the trio, the other two

were still adult dragons. They were not known for accepting such clearly subordinate positions

lightly. Oganj must be more than just a good mage if he could convince a pair of adult dragons to

follow his orders like that.

In any case, Princess was like an eight-headed train that didn’t need train tracks to get around. Her

great speed and bulk meant that she could simply barrel through the undead horde with minimal

resistance, trampling smaller corpses without slowing down and knocking the bigger stuff aside to

continue forward.

Then Alanic and his fellow mages finished their spell and summoned a fiery twister inside the heart

of the undead horde, where it began to suck in the undead towards the center and got increasingly

bigger and stronger the more undead it consumed.

Zorian had seen that spell before, and now he even knew what the secret behind it was. The fire

twister was actually trapping the souls of the undead it consumed and using them to power itself,

which was why it seemingly never ran out of mana and only got stronger as it killed more and more

undead. It was a rather dark piece of magic by church standards, almost necromantic in the way it

functioned, but fighting fire with fire and all that. The fire twister would release the souls it had

gathered when the spell eventually ended, letting them move on to the afterlife.

Before Zorian could celebrate too much, hundreds of red figures poured out of the mansion, flying

into the sky. Zorian squinted at the sight, finding the enemies in front of him unfamiliar. They looked

almost like bats, but with disturbingly humanoid bodies and faces, and snake-like tails trailing behind

them. The tail had a toothy mouth at the end, Zorian eventually realized, and the tails moved around

like they had a mind of their own.

[Demons,] Alanic sent to him through their telepathic link.

[Minor or major?] Zorian asked.

[There is no such thing as a minor demon,] Alanic answered him. [But I suppose these would count

as ‘minor’.]

Zorian clacked his tongue. Sadly, due to the way the time loop functioned, he had no experience at

all in how to fight something like this. All he knew was that demons were an incredibly diverse

bunch, with many strange powers that sometimes varied from individual to individual, never mind

different species. Fighting them was almost as bad as fighting a human mage. You never really

knew what to expect.

[Let us handle them,] another voice demanded over the telepathic link.

Zorian didn’t argue, he gave his permission and a swarm of sulrothum suddenly rose into the sky

with a terrible buzzing sound and flew off to intercept the demon bats.

For a while, Zorian busied himself with guiding several severing discs and decapitating war trolls and

winter wolves while Princess trampled everything in her path, but gradually things began to bother

him. Things were going pretty good, but he couldn’t help but feel that this was because the mansion

defenders weren’t really giving their all to stop them. They were just sending disposable troops to

buy themselves more time for… something.

The fact Oganj and his two students were just sitting there on the mansion roof and watching the

battle with seemingly no intention to get involved was especially bothering him. Why were the

freaking dragons not attacking!?

Hell, they hadn’t even sent the skeletal dragon into the fray!

He nervously fingered the cube given to him by the angel he summoned, wondering if he should–

No. No, this wasn’t the right time. Using it now would be a mistake. Something in the back of his

mind insisted that this was true.

He put the cube back into his jacket pocket and made a quick conversation with Zach, Alanic, and

everyone else.

Soon, an absolutely massive creature rose into the air in the distance before rapidly approaching. It

was the Sulrothum holy beast, the massive sandworm that had given them so much trouble when

they had tried to fight it. Now it was on their side. Flying on hundreds of translucent butterfly-like

wings, the worm made a beeline for the three dragons.

At the same time, the others also made their own moves. Zorian projected a blast of repelling force

in front of Princess, knocking aside some troublesome opponents that had halted her advance, and

ordered her to head straight for the mansion and its guardian dragons, damn everything else.

Meanwhile, a milky white orb suddenly rose into the air, carrying Zach, Xvim, Alanic, and Daimen

towards the dragons with incredible speed and agility.

The dragons immediately realized they were being targeted, and rose into the air as one. Oganj

bellowed out something to his two students and they each picked their own opponent – the left one

went to intercept Zorian and Princess, the right one flew off to engage the massive sandworm in the

sky above the mansion. As for Oganj, he seemed to have identified Zach’s group as the biggest

danger out of them all, and thus something he should deal with personally.

Zorian was modest enough to admit the dragon mage was probably right.

In any case, once Oganj decided it was time to fight, he did not hold back in the slightest. Zach’s

sphere was too fast and maneuverable for the great dragon to dodge it or breathe fire on it, so he

instead reached for his magic. Waving his hands in a surprisingly human-like gesture, Oganj created

an incandescent white sphere in his hand and thrust it in the opposing sphere’s general direction.

Even though the attack wasn’t aimed at him, and he was quite a distance away, Zorian could still

feel his neck hairs raise at the amount of mana Oganj poured into the spell. Dragon magic was

bullshit.

Thankfully, all of them were quite unusual in their own way, and Zach had three other people

supporting him. Before the destructive sphere could actually get close to Zach’s sphere and

detonate, space started to bend around it, like something invisible was being wrapped around it, and

then the sphere seemingly winked out of existence.

Moments later, a terrifying detonation sounded in the distance. Xvim had teleported Oganj’s

projectile away into a nearby region, but its detonation still sent vibrations through Zorian’s chest and

lit up the sky like a second sun.

Gods… no wonder Zach had died to Oganj so many times. How were they even supposed to fight

someone like this!?

“Watch out, you stupid savage!” Sudomir’s voice suddenly echoed all around the mansion, magically

amplified and projected so that it could be heard clearly in the whole region. “You’re lucky they got

rid of that projectile or you’d have leveled the whole mansion! Since when is this kind of magic

acceptable when you’re defending a place!?”

“Shut up!” Oganj yelled back in clear human tongue, his voice just as loud as Sudomir’s, despite

using no magic to amplify it. “I know what I’m doing! Go whine to your dead wife instead of bothering

me when I’m fighting!”

Zorian ignored the bickering between Sudomir and Oganj, because he had more immediate issues

to worry about. Oganj’s student was probably not as powerful as his master, but he was still a

dragon mage and he was coming for him.

Zorian fired a force lance at the incoming dragon’s wing, hoping to ground it. Dragon flight was

magical, but they still needed their wings intact if they wanted to use it, so wing membranes were a

big, well-known weakness.

Too well-known, apparently. The dragon tried to swerve out of the way of the force lance, but when

Zorian revealed he could make the lance pivot in the middle of flight and change directions on a

whim, he found out that the dragon also erected a shield around himself just in case. The force lance

hit the shield and shattered harmlessly upon it.

Visibly narrowing his eyes at Zorian and Princess, the dragon took a deep breath and launched a

stream of fire-based projectiles at them. Apparently this dragon practiced magic that allowed him to

shape his breath into various projectiles like exploding fireballs and fast-moving beams of flame.

He still couldn’t hit Princess. With her eight heads and her strangely-shaped body, she kind of

looked like she should be clumsy and slow… but she was a divinely-enhanced beast and this

impression was totally wrong. Princess was both fast and maneuverable, and not only did she

skillfully dodge every projectile the young dragon mage directed at her, she even found the time to

pick up various loose stones and small winter wolves that hadn’t moved away fast enough and hurl

them straight at the dragon in the air. She was a pretty good shot, too.

Plus, of course, she had Zorian riding on her back. Whenever she couldn’t dodge something, he

would just deflect it away while periodically annoying the dragon with simple force projectiles. He

was pretty sure that this was the dragon that had wanted to fight Princess when she had bellowed

out a challenge at the start of the battle, so he should be a fairly irritable sort.

Annoyingly, the dragon had placed mental shields on itself before the battle had even begun. They

weren’t much, but dragons were already a pain to affect with his powers, even without dedicated

mental defenses, due to their magic resistance. The mental shield, crude as it was, simply made the

idea of targeting it with mind magic a complete non-starter.

Thankfully, Zorian’s hopes about the dragon’s irritability proved to be correct. After repeatedly

dodging his projectiles and harassing him with force spells, the dragon had apparently had enough.

He could have continued flying high, outside of Zorian’s and Princess’s effective reach, but instead

he decided to descend closer to the ground so he could catch them with a more powerful attack.

It was a good attack, Zorian had to admit. The dragon created a translucent blue ball in front of him

and launched it at the pair. As it got closer, it suddenly extended into a large gelatinous dome and

trapped them inside it. Princess tried to bite through it, but the gelatinous barrier resisted her efforts

and even glued one of her jaws shut, forcing Zorian to cut her free. Meanwhile, the dragon clearly

took time powering up some kind of massive fire spell that would incinerate them both to ashes, now

that they were both trapped in a small area with no way to dodge.

Unfortunately for him, Princess could teleport.

Just before the dragon could release his spell, Princess quickly curled up into a ball and disappeared

from her gelatinous prison, taking Zorian with her.

Before the dragon could realize what happened, he had already launched the fire attack at the

empty dome, wasting his spell and hitting nothing. Then Princess popped into existence practically

next to him and Zorian quickly fired a whole bundle of severing whips at the dragon’s torso.

Being considerably tougher than a human, the dragon mage was not cut into tiny chunks by the

severing whips, but they did cut into his flesh, drawing blood and wrapping too tightly around him to

be easily dislodged. Especially since any struggle would just worsen his wounds. Zorian anchored

the severing whips to Princess’s back and ordered her to pull.

She did. The dragon let loose an almost girlish scream and plummeted to the ground, severing

whips digging ever deeper into his flesh. Before he could gather his bearings Princess was already

upon him, heads biting and snarling, and they both went down in a tangle of limbs and necks. The

fight quickly degenerated into a weird but vicious wrestling match, the dragon and divine hydra

rolling around the ground, knocking down small trees and smashing boulders into powder.

As for Zorian, he had thankfully already jumped off Princess’s back when she went after the downed

dragon, and was currently flying towards the other two dragon fights in a milky white sphere similar

to the one that Zach used to confront Oganj. He felt a little bad leaving Princess to fight the dragon

on her own, but he had faith she wasn’t going to get herself killed in his absence. She was a pretty

tough girl.

The other two fights, he soon realized, were still ongoing. In fact, they had merged into some kind of

confused combined battle, thanks to two facts. One, Oganj’s student couldn’t really stop the flying

sand worm – he could keep it busy, but the sand worm was too big and massive for the relatively

tiny dragon to stop it from going wherever it wished. Secondly, the iron beaks decided, on their own

initiative, to pick a fight with the two dragons. Zorian had no idea how that had happened, since

picking up a reason from the minds of iron beaks itself proved unhelpful – they were just very, very

angry and apparently hated the three dragons from the very moment they had shown up and

‘arrogantly’ claimed the mansion’s roof like they owned the whole place.

Compared to dragons, the iron beaks were nothing. However, there were a lot of them, and they

knew when to attack and when to retreat. Moreover, Zach and the others were protecting them,

since they found the vicious corvids useful as a distraction.

Also, apparently Sudomir really didn’t like the fact that his mansion, which contained his beloved

wife’s spirit, was in danger from all this fighting around it. As such, his voice constantly sounded from

the mansion, shouting instructions at the two dragons and insults at Zach and the others. He was

starting to sound increasingly incoherent as time went by, and by the time Zorian got close to the

battlefield, the man had apparently had enough.

The roof of the mansion crumbled and the skeletal dragon hidden inside the top half of it started to

pick itself up from the rubble.

Oganj gave the skeletal dragon, and the mansion itself, a contemptuous snort, before focusing back

on his current fight.

Of course, the other combatants wouldn’t allow another powerful creature to join the fight like that,

so before the skeletal dragon could launch itself into the air, Daimen suddenly materialized a giant

ectoplasmic body around himself and tackled it off the roof and into the ground below. Daimen had

once used this spell to tangle with Princess, back before they had realized how to take control of her,

and now it was being used to restrain Sudomir’s skeletal dragon.

Sadly, Sudomir was no amateur when it came to building his artificial horrors, and the skeletal

dragon wouldn’t be so easily restrained. Daimen gave it his best, but it was clear that he was

losing… and none of the others could afford to turn their back on the other two dragons to give him a

hand.

But Zorian, who had just arrived on the scene, could.

Before the two dragons could react, Zorian reached into the imperial orb that he carried with him and

an absolutely massive golem popped into existence. It was six meters tall and fully made from

gleaming, nigh-indestructible metal. The ground sank under its weight as it barreled towards the

skeletal dragon being desperately pinned to the ground by Daimen’s conjured giant. Perhaps it was

just Zorian’s imagination, but he could almost see an expression of pure panic in the dragon’s empty

eye sockets just before the metal colossus jumped on top of it and brought down its heavy spiked

fists right on top of its skull.

Sadly, the moment was slightly ruined by the fact said heavy metal fists didn’t shatter the skeletal

dragon’s skull into tiny fragments with a single blow. Instead, the golem ‘just’ chipped the skull and

ended any hope it had of getting into the air, where its maneuverability would make it a huge threat

to everyone on his side.

Before Zorian could celebrate and focus on grinding the stupid bone dragon to dust, though, a

strange ripple emanated from the mansion, causing both him and everyone else to halt in their

tracks.

“I really hoped this wouldn’t be necessary…” Sudomir’s voice sounded again, this time sounding

calmer and more subdued.

[Shit!] Zach suddenly swore over their telepathic connection, and then Zorian’s entire perception

lurched and twisted. His vision warped, his knees buckled and bile rose to his throat, threatening to

make him puke.

He immediately recognized the symptoms. It reminded him of a botched teleportation spell, except…

He quickly looked around. He was still next to Iasku Mansion, the colossus golem was still holding

the skeletal dragon pinned to the ground not far from him, and the iron beaks cawed frantically in the

sky above, their synchronized murder-flock wobbling chaotically in a disorganized fashion. He was

impressed they hadn’t dropped from the sky when the dizziness hit them.

Beyond Iasku Mansion, though, Zorian could see a building. A familiar building. And in the distance,

he could see burning fires and hear the sound of city defenders facing off against marauding war

trolls and hordes of undead.

It took him only a moment to realize what had transpired. During the last planar alignment, a group

of mages managed to perform an incredible feat of transplanting their city from one continent to

another. What Jornak and his allies did was relatively tame in comparison.

They had simply switched Iasku Mansion and its surrounding space with a piece of Cyoria.

Zorian sighed. He gave a mental order to the colossus golem and it brought down its fist once again

on the skeletal dragon’s skull, this time shattering it to pieces, causing the rest of its bony body to fall

limp and lifeless.

Despite all their attempts, everything converged back in Cyoria in the end.

In the sky above, Oganj gave a bellowing roar as the battle began anew.

Chapter 102

Giants

In the middle of Cyoria, relatively close to the massive bottomless hole around which the city was

built, there was an anomaly. A large mansion sat there like a lonely sentinel, surrounded by trees.

No road led to it, and the surrounding forest was far too thick and wild for a city park. The area was

perfectly circular, even cutting several buildings in half at the edges, as if someone had switched a

portion of the northern forest with a random city district with zero care as to how it would naturally fit

inside.

Which is exactly what had happened, of course. While Zorian and the others had been fighting the

dragons and trying to break into Iasku Mansion, their enemies had been performing a powerful

teleportation ritual to send said mansion straight into the heart of Cyoria, right next to the place

where the primordial release ritual was to take place.

Zorian took a few moments to replenish his mana reserves a little and marveled at the sheer

audacity of the feat. He had been curious for a while now why Quatach-Ichl, Silverlake, and Jornak

weren’t helping their dragon allies defend the mansion. Now he knew. This kind of ritual spell wasn’t

something that could be done on a whim, or stopped in the middle without consequences. Quatach-

Ichl, Jornak, and Silverlake were probably all required to pull this off, and they absolutely couldn’t

afford to get distracted for even a moment. That’s why they got the three dragon mages to guard

them at this critical time. That’s why they were so defensive in general.

They should have pushed them harder, Zorian thought to himself regretfully. If they had held nothing

back right from the start and tried to break into the mansion with absolutely everything at their

disposal, then maybe…

He shook his head, putting such thoughts to the side. This was no time for regrets and hypotheticals.

Besides, in a way, luck had been on their side. Zorian had not invested too much time studying

these kinds of ritual spells, but everything he knew about them told him they had to have started the

ritual a long time ago. Long before Zorian had given everyone a signal to start the attack, Jornak and

his allies had started casting their spell. If they had moved any slower, it was possible the fight would

have started with the mansion’s sudden teleportation in the middle of Cyoria. Now that would have

been a disaster!

He observed the battleground around him, trying to figure out his next course of action.

Princess had been too far to get caught in the teleportation effect, which meant she was effectively

out of the fight. It would take too much time and mana to get her to Cyoria, assuming she could even

finish her fight with her draconic opponent in a timely manner. The sulrothum’s flying sandworm had

also been left behind, being far, far too big for the teleportation spell.

On the bright side, both of the divine beasts had tied up one of the dragon mages through their

efforts. The one Princess had been fighting was obviously too far to get teleported, and the second

one had been hit by the sandworm and flung into the distance at the time the teleportation effect hit,

causing it to be left behind as well. The only dragon mage left now was Oganj, who was currently

fighting Zorian’s allies in the sky above the mansion.

Unfortunately, Oganj was by far the most powerful dragon mage out of the three. And they were now

fighting above a highly populated city, where collateral damage was very much an issue.

On the bright side, Zach and his entire group had followed Oganj to Cyoria, and they were joined by

most of the iron beaks and the sulrothum. Zach and the other human mages were currently busy

keeping Oganj from leveling the city, but the other two were basically unopposed. Under the

leadership of their high priest, the devil wasps had thoroughly beaten the demon bats, and were

currently just mopping them up. As for the iron beaks, they were quickly recovering from their

sudden change in scenery and their fighting spirit didn’t seem lessened by the experience. Both

groups would soon be free to join the other battlefields.

Which was good, because a flood of war trolls, various monsters, undead, and enemy mages

suddenly started pouring out of Iasku Mansion.

Zorian was not surprised by this. Why else would their enemies bother transporting the entire Iasku

Mansion to Cyoria unless it was filled to the brim with troops? Still, he was kind of surprised that they

managed to keep so many of their forces in reserve like this. The amount of soldiers and monsters

they had placed beneath Cyoria to fake the main attack wasn’t small, and they had also lost a great

many of their minions trying to delay them from reaching Iasku Mansion. Jornak and Quatach-Ichl

must have been far more active with recruiting than they thought. It wasn’t just the Altazian

mercenary groups, either – looking at the enemy forces spreading out into the city, Zorian could see

that many of them were of clear Ulquaan Ibasa origin. Quatach-Ichl must have paid a heavy price to

reinforce his existing soldiers with these new ones.

This was a risky move by the ancient lich, Zorian felt. There were too many Ibasans here for them to

retreat from the city in a timely manner, even with the help of a permanent dimensional gate. The

plan was probably for the Ibasan forces to retreat the same way they had come in: by retreating to

Iasku Mansion and then have it teleported again, this time out of the city. However, this was

something that was much easier to disrupt than his original plan, which meant Quatach-Ichl risked

losing a lot of forces today.

Idly, Zorian wondered how a huge loss in lives and tamed monsters here would reflect on Quatach-

Ichl’s reputation back on Ulquaan Ibasa, before deciding this wasn’t the time for such thoughts. He

directed the iron beaks at these new forces threatening the city, and sent a message to the

Sulrothum asking them to support them. He received no response from the sulrothum high priest,

but the devil wasps did start to fly towards the forces exiting Iasku Mansion, so they had clearly

gotten the message.

He also sent a signal to the academy. Up until this moment, the academy staff had taken a purely

defensive stance and had not gotten involved in the city fighting much, but an improvised combat

force had long been gathered and organized. Now that a mass of enemies had materialized

practically on their doorstep – the academy was also close to the Hole, after all – they also began

pouring out and started to actively confront them.

As for Zorian, he did nothing to help their allies against the enemy forces running amok in the city.

He’d done all he could for them. They would lose or triumph based on their own merits. Instead, he

kept replenishing his mana and waited for-

Ah. They were finally here.

Quatach-Ichl, Silverlake, and Jornak. The three of them marched out of Iasku Mansion once the flow

of troops leaving their base had slowed down to a trickle, their bearings proud and their steps never

faltering. All three of them were as Zorian had come to know them. The ancient lich was in his

skeletal battle form, black bones encased in gold-decorated armor and the imperial crown placed

securely on top of his bony head. Sickly green light emanated from him, something that he now

knew was a visible trace of a powerful ward anchored to the fancy armor he was wearing. His

appearance wasn’t just for the sake of appearances and intimidation. Jornak was still dressed in that

distinctive red robe he loved to wear, his face hidden in darkness. Truthfully, Zorian still often

thought of him as ‘Red Robe’ in his head, even though he was completely sure of his identity by this

point. Finally, Silverlake was looking the most relaxed out of the three, dressed in an expensive red

dress, hands clasped behind her back as she was looking around at everything around her. Zorian

couldn’t really hear her due to the distance between him and their group of three, but she seemed to

be quietly humming some kind of tune as she walked. It was hard to connect the beautiful, black-

haired woman in front of him with the withered old witch he had come to know in the time loop, but

they were clearly one and the same.

All three were under the effect of mind blank. Of course.

Two more new arrivals also caught his attention. At the same time their three main enemies

marched out of the mansion, a large procession of people in robes also left the mansion through

another entrance. The lead people were dressed in the same kind of red robe that Jornak was

wearing, and guarded tightly in the center of the procession was a large armored carriage that

seemed to be shaking from time to time, as if someone was pounding on it from the inside. The

group immediately set off in the direction of the Hole, barely glancing at the fights occurring around

the mansion.

The second thing that caught his attention was… another Quatach-Ichl. This one was identical to the

ancient lich that had just marched out of the mansion, except this one was holding a glowing red

gem the size of a human fist, and was standing directly on top of the ruined roof of Iasku Mansion.

Quatach-Ichl was using a simulacrum? How interesting. As far as Zorian could tell, Quatach-Ichl was

like Zach, in that he didn’t like using those unless he had to. He didn’t have the convenient telepathic

link to his copies like Zorian did, and he probably worried about what one of his copies would do

without his supervision. It was hard enough for Zorian to keep his copies in line, he couldn’t imagine

how many headaches other people experienced with them.

So that probably means…

The second Quatach-Ichl raised his black, skeletal hand in the air, his palm pointed at the sky,

holding the glowing red gem exposed for all to see. A complicated magic circle made out of blood

red light suddenly sprang up around his position. Red streams of light emanated from the gem like

many whip-like tentacles, and the air above the mansion started to twist and distort like hot summer

air.

Yeah. It was time.

He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved the angel cube. Then, he deployed the imperial orb

and retrieved from it a much bigger, metal cube of his own design.

Glancing to the side, he could see Daimen approaching him. His older brother had chosen to stay

still for a while after the teleportation event, rather than immediately rejoining Zach and the others in

fighting Oganj. He had spent a lot of mana fighting Sudomir’s skeletal dragon until Zorian had come,

so he probably felt it prudent to take a breather and recover some strength while he could.

“That thing on the roof is going to summon something,” Daimen told him, concern creeping into his

voice. “Something big.”

“Demons,” Zorian said. “I know. But look at those three marching towards us. Do you think we can

push through them to stop the summoning?”

Daimen looked at the ancient lich, the humming witch, and the man in the red robe. He didn’t know

them like Zorian did, but he was a powerful and experienced mage, and could make a decent

judgment. He then looked at the battle in the sky, where Zach, Alanic, and Xvim were fighting Oganj,

and scowled. Their companions were too busy to come to their aid.

“Can you help me hold them off while I do some summoning of my own?” Zorian asked, giving

Daimen a brief side-glance while focusing on the angel cube in his hands. He had never actually

done a summoning like this before. He really hoped he didn’t mess things up. That would be really

anti-climactic.

He swept his hands around him and invisible forces cut deep grooves in the ground around them,

forming a complicated magic circle of his own. The lines and glyphs began to glow blue.

“You won’t seriously ask me to fight three master mages alone?” Daimen asked incredulously. “I

think you have a very inflated view of my capabilities here, brother.”

“It’s fine,” Zorian insisted. “You just have to hold them off for a little while. Plus, you will have Mrva

here as support.”

Zorian pointed at the giant hulking golem standing behind them. Daimen muttered something about

Zorian having a stupid naming sense, but the reminder that he had a metal colossus on his side had

obviously helped breathe additional confidence into him.

“Plus…” Zorian added, placing his hand on the other, much bigger cube. “I won’t be completely

helpless.”

Keeping his hand on said cube, Zorian copied Quatach-Ichl’s gesture and raised his hand up into the

air, palm facing upwards. The small angel cube greedily accepted his mana, interfacing itself with

Zorian’s improvised magic circle. Hundreds of tiny golden glyphs lit up on the surface of the cube,

though from a distance Zorian imagined it just looked like he was holding up a miniature sun in the

palm of his hand.

A vortex of multicolored light and soft wind suddenly formed around him as the angel cube started to

madly draw in ambient mana in the area. A massive, mind-boggling torrent of mana was sucked into

the cube, more than Zorian could have ever provided out of his own personal mana reserves, even if

he sat there and powered it for several months at the time.

This wasn’t how summoning rituals usually worked. If Zorian had tried to use ambient mana to help

pay for the summoning like this in normal circumstances, he wouldn’t just suffer mana poisoning –

he would explode into ash and dust before he channeled even a quarter of the mana he was

handling now. However, this time he didn’t have to channel the ambient mana through himself, as

with most spellcasting. The cube was somehow doing that on its own, and Zorian simply had to

make sure to guide the mana across proper channels and shape the summoning spell. His mana

reserves were still dropping dangerously fast, but the ritual was more taxing on his shaping skills

than anything else.

Did the angel make the cube specifically to take advantage of Zorian’s high shaping skills? Because

this was hard. Insanely hard! Other than maybe Xvim, Zorian didn’t think there was any person other

than him that could stop all this mana from running out of control and ruining the titanic summoning

ritual the cube wanted to execute.

Zorian wasn’t entirely sure he could do this himself, actually. The difficulty was still increasing. His

hand shook and beads of sweat formed on his forehead as the cube in his palm shone brighter and

brighter.

‘An angel’s trust is a heavy thing to bear,’ Zorian lamented in his head.

Focused as he was at his task, he was only partially aware of things happening around him, and

even that was purely because his mind was fused with so many of his simulacrums. One of the

simulacrums took over his body and senses while he focused on shaping the summoning spell, and

in his current fused mental state, this allowed him to observe his surroundings in a way he would

normally be unable to achieve without being distracted.

Almost immediately after he started his own summoning, Jornak, Quatach-Ichl, and Silverlake

stopped their dramatic march and just plain rushed at him, hoping to stop the spell. If he hadn’t been

distracted by the strain of the summoning, Zorian would have found the scene funny. As it was, he

just watched as the enemy trio started hurling spells at him, only for them to be stopped cold by

Daimen and Mrva. Quatach-Ichl did his best to hit him with a multitude of his signature red

disintegration beams, Jornak was showering the entire area with blindingly bright arcs of lightning

that dodged through any static shield and obstacle in the way, and Silverlake was trying to copy

Zorian by launching various potion bottles at him with the aid of telekinetic spells.

Nothing worked. Daimen recklessly burned through his mana reserves to erect massive golden

shields in front of them, tanking most of the damage, and occasionally dispelled incoming projectiles

by hitting them with pale blue beams and invisible waves of disrupting force. Anything that got

through him was stopped by Mrva, who was tough and warded enough to simply intercept incoming

projectiles with his body.

Mrva also frequently went on the offensive, picking up any rocks and boulders from the craters

exposed in the fighting and throwing them with surprisingly good accuracy. He also sometimes

suddenly charged at them and tried to stomp them flat – a crude but effective tactic that frequently

interrupted their spellcasting and forced them to dodge.

In general, the metal colossus was far faster and more agile than its looks would suggest. It was no

slow, lumbering giant. It was a golem equivalent of a dragon, and Zorian was very pleased it was

performing as well as he had hoped. It was just a shame he couldn’t figure out how to make Mrva fly

as well.

Something to tackle when he started building version two of the colossus.

At some point, Jornak seemed to have had enough of the massive golem, and tried to get rid of

Mrva the same way his simulacrum had gotten rid of Zorian’s bodyguard golem back in the tunnels

underneath Cyoria. Jornak threw a bunch of bombs at the charging golem and they erupted into a

web of hair-thin spatial cracks that enveloped the area. Mrva was completely submerged in the

spatial cracks… but he emerged completely unscathed.

The metal colossus was a lot bigger than his bodyguard golems, and had a lot more time and money

invested into him. Zorian had equipped Mrva with the finest wards he could set up, and it would take

more than that to take it apart.

Surprised at the fact the golem was still whole and rushing at him, Jornak panicked for a moment

and tried to cast a short-range teleport to evade the threat. That was a mistake. One of the wards

Zorian placed on Mrva was a teleportation ward that could be amplified to extend a fair distance from

his body. The ward was a really malicious sort, too – one that didn’t just disrupt the teleportation but

also tried to do it in a way that made the spell go haywire and try to kill the caster.

Jornak’s body shuddered and lurched as his teleportation spell was violently disrupted. He was good

enough to stabilize the failing spell, enough that he didn’t get himself torn to pieces by the

dimensional stresses, but he wasn’t good enough to escape all consequences. Dazed and unable to

react in time, he was almost stomped by Mrva’s foot before Quatach-Ichl gestured with his hand and

pulled him out of the way of the charging golem.

Pity. But no matter. Quatach-Ichl and Silverlake were perfectly lined up at the moment, so Mrva

thrust both of his hands towards them, causing a huge wave of wind and kinetic force to barrel

towards them.

Self-casting items were largely disappointing. They could only really produce crude blasts of force,

fire and the like. For some uses, however, that was enough… especially if the blast was big enough.

Quatach-Ichl was too experienced to fall for this, and the blast only caused him to be momentarily

distracted as he focused on counteracting it. Silverlake, however, wasn’t that much of a fighter. The

blast caught her entirely by surprise and she reacted too slowly, causing her to get knocked back

into the distance.

She would be back soon, but it didn’t matter. In this kind of battle, every second counted. Silverlake

was the weakest among the three enemies facing them, but still very dangerous. Having her gone

for a while was great.

Sadly, Mrva and Daimen had been unable to take advantage of this opportunity because two giant

spheres of black bones suddenly burst out of Iasku Mansion and came barreling down at Mrva. As

they got closer, they unrolled into familiar skeletal crocodilians. Zorian had seen one of them in

action when he and Zach had gone to rob Eldemar’s royal treasury with Quatach-Ichl, and knew

exactly how powerful and resilient they were.

Back then, Quatach-Ichl said the crocodilian skeleton beast was his ‘pet’. Of course he actually had

more than one…

The two skeleton beasts quickly pounced upon Mrva, tying him down.

“What great allies I have,” the ancient lich said, bending his skeletal neck sideways as if he was

cracking his neck. His voice was amplified, allowing everyone in the vicinity to hear him. It was

probably intended primarily for Jornak and Silverlake, though. “Better than nothing, I guess, but only

just. You’d think literal time travelers would be better than this.”

“What?” Daimen asked, confused. He had been preparing to keep the ancient lich tied down, but

Quatach-Ichl’s statement made him hesitate.

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” Quatach-Ichl said, sounding surprised. “Aren’t you his big brother or

something? Looks like family doesn’t mean what it used to these days.”

Before Daimen could say anything, two more simulacrums of Quatach-Ichl suddenly appeared right

next to the original. Or at least Zorian guessed the lich they had been fighting thus far was the

original. All three Quatach-Ichls immediately hasted themselves and turned into a blur. A split

second later, each of them cast three spells each.

Nine red stars, each smaller than the tip of Zorian’s finger but shining bright, immediately shot

towards Zorian with blinding speed.

Daimen scrambled to block them, but it was too little, too late. The first five slammed into Daimen’s

golden, multi-layered barrier, blocked by it but ripping it to shreds in the process. The sixth one was

stopped by Daimen himself, who retrieved a small mirror from his pocket and physically intercepted

the projectile with it. His brother’s prized divine artifact lived up to its divine nature and stopped the

projectile cold. Unlike the time it stopped Princess’s attack beam, it didn’t break in the process.

There was a flash of light and the red star was just gone, Daimen standing unharmed behind it.

The other three stars rushed towards Zorian completely unopposed.

Up in the sky, his three allies realized he was in danger and tried to help him, but Oganj realized

what was happening too and suddenly launched an entire swarm of blindingly bright white beams to

intercept them and make them unable to render aid.

Although aware of the incoming attack due to his simulacrums, Zorian did nothing to evade it. He

kept stabilizing the summoning spell with all his might.

However, the large metal cube he was resting his hand on wasn’t as passive. With a whirring sound

of shifting metal plates and internal mechanisms coming to life, it flew in front of him, placing itself in

the path of the incoming red stars.

Two of the stars swerved to the side, making sure the cube could only physically intercept one of the

stars, but it didn’t help. The cube seemingly fell apart at the seams, suddenly separating itself into

eight smaller cubes. They positioned themselves into a rough sphere around Zorian, and a faint blue

sphere of magical force, almost invisible, encased the entire area around him. The smaller cubes

didn’t even try to intercept the red stars after that, and the three projectiles slammed into the barrier

completely unopposed.

The borderline invisible barrier barely even reacted. Anyone standing close to Zorian would see a

handful of gentle ripples emanating from the points of impact for a fraction of a second, but these

quickly subsided and left no trace of damage on the shield.

To his credit, the ancient lich wasn’t shocked by the sight. He simply launched into one spell barrage

after another, burning through gods know how much mana to launch a multitude of spells at Zorian.

Zorian was kind of worried for Daimen at this point, since this kind of onslaught could probably kill

his older brother very easily if the lich decided it would be good idea to kill the distraction first.

Thankfully, Daimen quickly realized the safest place to be right now was next to Zorian, being

protected by his shield, and promptly retreated behind him so that Zorian’s cube could protect him as

well.

And protect them both the cube did. The cube was not a simple spell aid or ward stone like most

such tools. It was closer in nature to a golem, and was just as expensive and complicated to build as

Mrva had been. Although no magic item could truly cast a spell, only maintain one indefinitely,

Zorian’s cube did a pretty good job of mimicking spellcasting. A dizzying amount of protective spells

were constantly maintained by the cube. By amplifying some of them and suppressing others, the

cube could adjust its protections from moment to moment, creating custom shields to counter

specific type of spells. It did that mostly autonomously, because Zorian had animated it in the same

manner in which one would a golem. None of its operation required any mana, or even much

attention from Zorian. Thus, none of Quatach-Ichl’s attacks were effective.

Projectiles slammed into the impenetrable, ever-shifting barrier created by the eight small cubes

orbiting Zorian, producing no effect. Larger, slower attacks were dealt with more actively, by one of

the little cubes firing marbles at them. The marbles were all charged with various spell bombs, and

each cube had a pocket dimension absolutely packed with them, making it unlikely they would run

out of marbles any time soon. Once the marble detonated next to an attack, it would be either

dispersed or weakened enough for the barrier to negate it with ease. Attempts to send ectoplasmic

constructs or animated earth at them were dealt with by Daimen, who picked them apart from the

safety of the cube’s defense. The shield was sufficiently sophisticated that it would let Daimen’s

attacks pass through without obstruction, even though that was not normally possible when attacking

behind another mage’s shield.

Silverlake and Jornak had recovered by this point and did their best to help Quatach-Ichl, but while

Mrva was being distracted by the crocodilian skeletons, he wasn’t fully tied down. As such, the two

had to keep the colossal golem at bay without Quatach-Ichl’s help while trying to help him. It wasn’t

very effective.

Eventually Quatach-Ichl realized this wasn’t working and that attempting to overpower Zorian in this

manner was just him burning through mana for nothing. Zorian wasn’t even spending any mana on

defending himself, so the lich’s attacks weren’t even wearing him out.

“Oganj!” Quatach-Ichl suddenly shouted. “Help me crack this turtle’s shell!”

“Get these idiots off me, then!” Oganj responded, trying to swat away the milky sphere flying around

him out of the sky.

The ancient lich crouched and jumped, and immediately shot up into the sky like a bullet.

Daimen looked torn between pursuing the lich, even though he knew this would take him out of the

safety of Zorian’s shield, and trying to put more pressure on Jornak and Silverlake. He eventually

decided to try and kill Jornak.

It was probably a smart decision and Zorian fully supported it. While countering whatever Quatach-

Ichl was doing would probably be more useful, it would probably result in his death. Zorian would

rather face more danger than see Daimen die here. Visions of a pale and bleeding Daimen, near-

death after he had sacrificed his life force to allow Zorian to save himself, momentarily flooded his

mind, his control over the summoning spell slipping…

No! No, focus… focus… He pushed these thoughts to the side, just like he had pushed them aside

this whole month, and focused on the matter at hand. The angel summoning. It had to work, or else

the enemy was going to have a whole bunch of demons on their side, and they would have nothing

to counter them with.

The battle in the air intensified. Somehow Zach and Alanic found a moment to do some spell

interruption of their own and directed a barrage of projectiles at Quatach-Ichl’s simulacrum standing

on the roof of Iasku Mansion, trying to interrupt his demon summoning. They failed, both because

the flying Quatach-Ichl interfered on behalf of his copy and because Iasku Mansion still had

reasonably intact defensive wards, despite all the fighting occurring around it.

But then, a disaster struck. Quatach-Ichl managed to distract Zach enough to let Oganj face just

Alanic and Xvim for a moment. Rather than try to kill one of them – an action that could work, but

would probably fail – the dragon mage decided to instead try to kill Zorian.

Zorian could see the logic of it. Dragon battle magic basically specialized in huge, mana-hungry

spells that rivaled human artillery magic in power, but with none of the drawbacks that branch of

magic usually had. Quatach-Ichl couldn’t overpower Zorian’s defenses by sheer number of spells,

but a powerful piece of dragon magic could surely crack any kind of shield outside of dedicated

building wards like the ones centered around Iasku Mansion.

Time seemed to slow down to Zorian as he watched Oganj finish his spell. The dragon’s yellow,

slitted eyes seemed to radiate pride and contempt as he thrust his scaly, clawed hand towards him,

and a huge ball of incandescent flame came screaming down at Zorian.

Literally screaming. Zorian didn’t know if the old dragon mage added that effect purely for the sake

of surprise and intimidation, but the massive fireball created a sharp screaming sound as it flew

through the air.

Zorian still didn’t move to dodge. The eight little cubes stopped orbiting around him, causing the

shield around him to collapse, and flew towards the incoming fireball with great speed, quickly

arranging themselves into a ring-shaped formation. Jornak and Silverlake tried to take advantage of

Zorian’s momentary defenseless position to kill him before the fireball hit, but Daimen and Mrva

stopped that from working. As for the fireball, it flew undaunted towards the ring of cubes flying

towards it, even though Zorian was sure Oganj could control its flight and try to get it to dodge. He

supposed that the dragon mage was confident his spell would overpower whatever defensive effect

the cube possessed.

He was bound to be disappointed. As the fireball got close to the ring of cubes, it seemed to enter a

zone of literal slowed time. A temporal dilation bubble that made time pass slower on the inside than

on the outside. Oganj’s eyes widened as he tried to pull his spell out of the temporal mire, but the

cubes would never allow that. The ring of cubes passed around the burning projectile and it simply…

disappeared.

Then they immediately turned around and re-established the defensive field around Zorian.

It was as if the cubes pulled an invisible bag over the fireball and carried it off. Which… wasn’t that

far from the truth, really. Oganj’s massive fireball was currently safely stored in the cube’s special,

time dilated pocket dimension. It wasn’t quite frozen in time, but it was close. Very close.

Oganj gave him an angry, hateful look, but was in no position to do anything to him anymore. The

moment Quatach-Ichl had given him had passed, and Zach was back in the fight and angrier than

ever.

Besides… Zorian was almost done with his summoning. Even though he had started his spell later

than Quatach-Ichl’s simulacrum, he seemed to be working faster.

Quatach-Ichl realized it too.

“You are to manage this alone for a while. I need to speed things up,” Quatach-Ichl yelled, and then

flew off in the direction of his simulacrum. He soon took a place beside him, causing the demon

summoning to speed up immensely.

Gritting his teeth, Zorian sent even more mana into the angel cube in his palm, causing it to suck in

even more ambient mana from the environment and increasing the strain on his concentration and

shaping skills to the edge of the breaking point. Even with the help of his simulacrums, his

awareness constantly shrank, until the golden cube above his head became his entire world.

Suddenly, the pressure completely disappeared. The air above him warped and twisted, and there

was suddenly a huge shadow looming over him.

It was the same angel he and Zach had spoken to earlier in the month. Or at least it looked the same

to Zorian. A mass of black branches with orange eyes instead of leaves, wreathed in fire and light.

However, this incarnation of the angel was bigger.

Much, much bigger. The angel in front of him dwarfed virtually everything around it. Even Oganj and

Mrva looked like children before it. Other than the sulrothum’s flying sandworm, this was the largest

creature Zorian had laid his eyes on in his life.

The angel wasn’t alone. Flying around him were what Zorian could only describe as animated balls

of white wings. There were at least 20 of them, and if there was a body hidden somewhere beneath

all the feathers, Zorian couldn’t see it. They looked tiny next to the titanic burning tree of eyes, but

Zorian estimated they were twice as big as he was.

Another four angels, these ones twice as large as the wing things, silently floated next to the main

angel. They looked bestial, reminiscent of lions with a very long, flexible body. They flew through the

air without wings, their bodies undulating in a serpentine manner, and they had no head. Instead of a

head, they had a ring of white masks, each with a different expression, circling above their neck.

The sudden appearance of the huge angel and its group put an immediate end to all the aerial

fighting. Oganj immediately vacated the area, retreating towards Iasku Mansion and its defensive

wards, while Zach, Alanic, and Xvim landed next to Zorian, grateful for a chance to take a breather

and replenish their mana reserves.

When Zorian looked towards Iasku Mansion, however, he realized the angels weren’t the only new

arrivals. Quatach-Ichl had apparently finished his summoning at the same time he did, because

there was an army of demons arrayed in front of them.

The demons were… a diverse bunch. There were hundreds of them huddling around Iasku Mansion,

divided among 30 or so different ‘species’. One group looked like man-sized black cats with blood

red eyes and shark-like grins. Another consisted of large, hunched, pale-skinned humanoids with

four arms, no eyes, a long tail, and quills on their back. Yet another looked like brown eggs scuttling

around on long, thin, spider-like legs. A multitude of human faces danced on the surface of the

‘eggs’, most of them looking as if in pain. Isolated and given a wide berth even by the other demons,

a large dark red rose towered over most of its demon brethren, supported by a multitude of thorny

tentacles that probed all around it as if looking for targets. A regimen of humanoid demons stood at

attention in one corner, carrying spears and covered from head to toe in black armor with way too

many spikes and blade-like protrusions on it, mimicking some ancient human legion. A flock of

disgusting, grub-like creatures floated from place to place, dripping saliva everywhere.

However, this multitude of demons didn’t look too impressive in Zorian’s eyes. There were a lot of

them, but they were pretty small, at least compared to the angels. Zorian was leery about drawing

too many conclusions from the size difference alone, but the way the demon horde subtly cowered

every time they looked at the massive burning tree in the sky told Zorian it was not something to

completely discount.

No, what really worried Zorian was the giant humanoid torso floating above the demon horde. This

demon was big. Not as big as the burning tree above Zorian, but big enough to rival Oganj and

Mrva. The torso was headless and armless, but there was a gigantic eye embedded into its torso,

purple and glowing. An armor seemingly made out of various bones – some of them human, some

from animals, and some from strange entities that Zorian couldn’t recognize – covered the torso,

leaving little except the eye visible to the world.

The lesser demons beneath it cowered before the group of angels, but the eye in the torso looked

completely unafraid, studying the scene before it with detached curiosity.

For a moment it glanced at Zorian, and Zorian made the mistake of meeting its gaze. He

immediately felt his soul shake and his vision began to blur.

A massive black branch extended from the tree above, stabbing into the earth in front of Zorian and

breaking the eye contact between him and the purple eye on the horizon.

Zorian’s mind immediately cleared and he quickly reinforced his soul defenses, directing a silent

thanks towards the angel above. He didn’t think that would have killed him, but he really didn’t want

to engage a powerful demon in a soul magic fight, no matter how minor it was.

For several seconds, the battlefield was silent, neither side wanting to make the first move.

Eventually, Jornak amplified his voice and spoke out to Zorian and the others.

“If we fight here, the city will get leveled,” he said.

“If we don’t fight here, you’ll release Panaxeth and the city will still get leveled,” Zach responded, his

voice still amplified. “What’s your point?”

“I’m just foolishly hoping you will see reason,” Jornak said. “No matter what you do, the city is

doomed. You are doomed. You were doomed the moment you accepted that poisonous contract with

the angels. We both know they probably hoped something like this would happen and that you would

end up dying at the end of the month, even if you achieve your goal. The primordial is stopped and

the hero conveniently disappears at the end of the story, unable to use his godlike abilities to upset

the status quo or enact any real change. You were never supposed to survive this.”

Several seconds ticked by in silence. Zorian glanced at the looming angel above him, trying to see if

it would speak up to contradict him. It did not.

He had no idea what that meant. Maybe Jornak was right. Maybe the angel thought his words were

not even worth responding to.

“But I… I have a chance to live through this. To change things… to change everything for the better,”

Jornak continued. “Is the sacrifice of one city, a city that spit on your family’s sacrifice and robbed

you of your birthright, such a heavy sacrifice?”

“You’re wasting your time,” Zach told him. He turned his head skyward, towards the angel above

them. “What are you waiting for? Every moment they stall for time, the cultists and their sacrifices

get closer to the Hole. Let’s finish this.”

“Not yet,” the angel said simply. Its voice rumbled all around them, deep and resonant.

“Fine,” Jornak said, sounding a bit angry. Zorian didn’t understand why… did he honestly think Zach

would suddenly roll over and die if he asked nicely? They’d even summoned a huge angel and

everything! “Since you’re being like this, let’s raise the stakes a little.”

He snapped his fingers, the sound amplified along with his voice, and three different detonations

occurred at different spots of the city. Instead of dust and gravel, however, what erupted out of these

detonations was a geyser of smoky black shapes. They were difficult to make out from this distance,

but Zorian could easily puzzle out what they were.

Wraiths. Lots and lots of wraiths.

Suddenly, Zorian imitated Jornak’s actions and snapped his fingers as well. There was no explosion,

but the swarms of wraiths released by the bombs suddenly all converged on several different

locations of the city and disappeared. As if a hidden predator had drawn them in and swallowed

them without a trace.

Jornak seemed confused at the sudden event.

“Surprised?” Zorian said out loud, amplifying his voice. “Well, you did give us plenty of forewarning

about the wraith bombs. It’s only natural that we prepared countermeasures.”

“How…?” Jornak began, before suddenly stopping when he realized he was asking Zorian to explain

how he countered his move. Of course he wasn’t going to tell him something like that.

In truth, it was something that Zorian had Sudomir to thank for most of all. After all, the man had

already figured out how to attract and trap bodiless souls over a wide area inside his mansion.

Zorian couldn’t really duplicate his grand feat, but he could make smaller versions of the soul well,

adapted to trapping wraiths, and scatter them across the city.

Even then, trapping free-willed wraiths was significantly different from drawing in ordinary souls of

the dead. Zorian had to draw upon his knowledge of the soulseizer chrysanthemum and its ability to

suck in souls of living beings to make the device work well enough.

Fortunately, Zorian had gotten lots and lots of insight into the inner workings of the soulseizer

chrysanthemum during the last six months of the time loop…

Before anyone could say something, everyone noticed a swarm of distant dots approaching the city

in the distance.

Eagles. Giant eagles ridden by battlemages.

Apparently Eldemar’s military had managed to organize a response and was about to get involved.

Zorian couldn’t help but feel a jolt of fear at the thought. This was entirely unplanned, and he had no

idea how the soldiers riding on those eagles would react to their presence.

The burning tree floating above them, however, didn’t seem surprised.

“Now, we fight,” the angel rumbled, before surging towards the demon horde.

The demon horde roared out a challenge and rushed forth to meet them.

Chapter 103

Window of Opportunity

As Zorian watched the massive angel tree and demonic Cyclops torso barrel through the air towards

one another, his thoughts inevitably took a depressing and fatalistic turn. He wasn’t deluded enough

to think they could solve this crisis without the city taking massive casualties, but as he watched the

impending clash of titans in front of him, he couldn’t help but conclude that Jornak was right.

The city was going to get leveled to the ground, one way or the other.

Thus far, the collateral damage from their battle had been fairly modest. They were fighting around

Iasku Mansion, and a sizeable portion of the city around it had gotten replaced with a patch of forest.

The trees had taken the brunt of the fighting. There was no way this would remain true for long, and

it left Zorian feeling powerless and frustrated. His primary goal was admittedly rather straightforward

and selfish – he wanted to ensure he and everyone he cared about survived this evening – but he

had lived in this city for a literal decade, and had sunk countless hours and resources into making

sure it survived this evening. He did not want to see it destroyed like this. What was their angel ally

thinking? It seemed to Zorian that the angel had predicted many of the things that occurred, so

why…

Almost as if they could hear his silent laments, the remaining angels sprang into action. The four

lion-serpent things that were flanking the burning tree didn’t try to join the battle. Instead, they swiftly

flew away from the angel tree they had been circling, as if they intended to flee, scattering in all

directions. No one was fooled by their maneuver, however, and they soon slowed down and

positioned themselves on the edges of the forested area, equidistant from one another. A faint

yellow force field immediately enclosed the area in a cubical prison.

Though it looked extremely pale and weak, Zorian didn’t believe for a moment that it would be easily

pierced.

Moments later, a barrage of spells from Jornak’s side hit the walls of the cube, confirming his

suspicions. The barrier was extraordinarily tough. Not even Oganj’s spell made it weaken, and the

dragon mage could basically fling artillery spells on demand.

Zorian relaxed a little, recovering his reserves more as he observed the situation and looked for an

opening. Zach and the rest of the people on his side did the same, clustering close to him to take

advantage of his powerful defenses. Jornak and Quatach-Ichl launched a few random spells to try to

put pressure on them, but those were effortlessly stopped by his defense cube.

His precious creation was burning through its stored mana at a terrifying rate to maintain this level of

power, but it was also stocked with a terrifying amount of crystalized mana so it would last for at

least another four hours.

Long enough, in other words. They would either win or lose by then.

In any case, neither Jornak nor anyone else on the enemy side could devote much time to figuring

out a way to get through their defenses. The angel tree and the cyclopean demon collided with

terrifying force. A flood of orange flame and lightning-like bursts of purple energy erupted around

them, intermingling with one another and sweeping across the entire battlefield, before being

stopped by the cubical barrier.

For a while, everything was chaos. Those unfortunate enough to be close to the initial clash were

either vaporized by the energies, or thrown away much like dandelion fluff picked up by the wind.

Everyone else was frantically doing their best to vacate their area – a task made more complicated

by the fact the two titans did not stay static, and instead moved around as they fought.

All of this was good news for Zorian and his allies, of course – there were only a handful of them, but

they were all very powerful, and they had a very good defense that none of them had to spend mana

to maintain. Unfortunately, the same thing was largely true for Jornak and his allies, too. They had

Iasku Mansion, which had its own wards they could hide behind. Sudomir’s work was less advanced

than Zorian’s, but he had an entire building to work with and literal years to slowly assemble his ward

scheme. It would take more than this to break down the mansion’s defenses.

To Zorian’s joy, the stalemate between the two titans didn’t last long at all. Although the demon torso

never visibly lost its composure and kept fighting fiercely, it soon became obvious it was weaker than

the angel tree. It could hold its own against the angel, but it was constantly on the defensive,

constantly pushed back and retreating, and utterly unable to stop the angel tree from engaging

additional opponents around them.

And the angel tree ruthlessly took advantage of it.

The angel tree’s might was awe inspiring. Its branches were seemingly numberless and impossibly

flexible, stretching to great distances at will and bending like rubber while losing none of their power

and destructiveness. Its many eyes allowed it to take in everything around it, and it had incredible

multitasking abilities. It was constantly engaging multiple targets simultaneously, slashing undead

apart with casual swings of its branches, burning the war trolls to ashes with its eerie orange flames,

and snatching the more resilient demons and drawing them deeper into its tangle of limbs where

their ectoplasmic bodies would be ripped to pieces by attacks from all directions until they

disappeared into puffs of smoke. The twenty angel wing balls that followed the angel tree helped

with this task, herding enemies towards the celestial titan with powerful gusts of wind.

Even better, every once in a while the angel tree would maneuver the fight to get close to Iasku

Mansion and then ruthlessly start pounding on the defensive wards of the building, causing them to

visibly strain. The wing balls that followed it contributed to this in their own way, firing intensely

bright, lightning-like blasts of energy at the ward scheme. Although the demon torso did everything it

could to repulse them from the area, it wasn’t doing a good enough job, and eventually Quatach-Ichl

and Oganj had to abandon the protection of the mansion in order to help the demon torso suppress

the rampaging angels.

This was too good of an opportunity to pass up for Zorian and the others, and they decided to join

the fray and help the angel tree prevail. After all, they didn’t even have to overpower their enemies –

if they could simply push Oganj or Quatach-Ichl into the angel’s waiting embrace, its lethal branches

would take care of the rest for them and they would have one less heavy-hitter on the enemy side to

worry about.

Zorian mentally ordered the defensive barrier of his defense cube to become flatter and more

tangible at the bottom, and to spread itself out over a larger area, and the cube automatically

rearranged itself according to his wishes. Sigils inscribed on its surface glowed, mechanical pieces

whirled and moved into alternative positions, and soon enough Zorian was standing on a large,

heavily shielded, flying platform. He signaled to the others to jump on the platform, and when they

did, the platform shot towards the scene of the battle with great speed.

Sadly, Mrva couldn’t fit on the platform, so Zorian could only order his beloved creation to follow after

them on foot. Not that it mattered much – Mrva was all but unstoppable. He had so much weight and

speed that just about anything that tried to stop him was simply shoved aside without impeding him

much. A regiment of black-armored demons made the most credible attempt, using their great

numbers and military-like discipline to slow him down for a time, but even they were ultimately

thwarted when Mrva jumped into the air to bypass most of them.

As they approached, they had a great view of the titanic battle in front of them. With the support of

Oganj and Quatach-Ichl, the demon torso had been given a chance at a comeback. It was pouring a

stream of dark purple lightning at the angel tree, forcing the celestial being on the defense for the

first time in the fight. Jagged rays of red light rampaged through the angel’s branches, temporarily

unopposed, actually severing some of them and leaving deep gouges on its trunks. As for Oganj, he

appeared to be busy fighting off the wing balls that accompanied the angel tree, which were

frantically firing their blue lightning blasts at the dragon mage in an attempt to keep at least one

opponent away from their leader.

Zorian would have ordered the platform to go faster if it wasn’t already flying as fast as it possibly

could.

Then, disaster struck. Some of the lesser demons noticed their advance and decided to stop them.

Zorian didn’t take them seriously at first, as it was just that flock of disgusting, grub-like creatures

that he had noticed floating around the edges of the demon horde when it had first been summoned.

He had taken them to be just one more group of minor demons brought in to fill out the numbers, but

now that they were attacking him, it quickly became obvious they were one of the more dangerous

demon varieties for him personally.

That stupid glowing saliva they were drooling all over the place was actually insanely damaging to

force shields! The little wretches were capable of spitting globs of it over surprisingly great distances,

and they were really quite fast and agile when they tried. And there were a lot of them.

As much as he didn’t want to, Zorian had to slow down his advance in order to deal with these little

pests…

Mrva was still continuing forward, of course, but the demon horde had a solution for him as well, it

seemed. The ground in front of the charging Mrva suddenly erupted, and a multitude of thorny, ropy

tentacles shot forwards and wrapped themselves around the golem’s limbs and torso. Zorian

ordered Mrva to simply charge through and use his great weight and momentum to break free, but to

his surprise, this didn’t work. The thorny tentacles refused to break or lose their grip on the golem,

and managed to stop its charge.

Like an ominous figure, a large rose-shaped demon rose out of the earth, tall enough to tower even

over Mrva. Zorian remembered seeing it near the epicenter of that initial clash between the angel

tree and the demon torso, after which it disappeared. He had thought it died back then, but

apparently it simply took shelter under the ground and waited for a convenient moment to reveal

itself.

Considering it could stop a charging Mrva in his tracks, the demon rose was likely quite powerful.

They had only spent a few moments engaging the grub swarm and the demon rose when Zorian

received a telepathic message from a familiar voice.

[What are you doing?] the angel tree thundered in his mind. The voice was calm and collected, but

the mental volume of the communication was painfully high and the tone was accusatory. [Stop

wasting your time here and get out of this place. You need to stop Panaxeth from breaking free of

his prison, or else all this will be irrelevant.]

[What?] Zorian protested, feeling rather wronged at the implication he was willingly wasting time. He

glanced at the yellow barrier boxing them in and, sure enough, it was still very much intact. [But the

barrier-]

[It’s for our enemies only,] the angel tree said. [It will not stop you.]

Ugh, and the damn tree only felt like mentioning this now? Why not at the very start of this thing,

when it was first erected? This had to be deliberate. The angel had some kind of private plan that

involved them staying inside this box for a while, the manipulative bastard.

[Fine,] Zorian told the angel. [I just need to get myself and my golem out of this situation and then I’ll-

]

He hadn’t even finished the sentence when the air in front of the platform warped strangely, scaring

everyone currently standing on it, and a massive black branch wreathed in orange flames suddenly

appeared in front of them, striking down. The grubs harassing them were caught completely off

guard by the sudden attack and promptly got speared, bisected, and burned. It was a total wipeout,

with the handful of surviving grubs fleeing the scene immediately.

The branch continued downward without pause, aiming at the demon rose tangling with Mrva. The

demon shook and swayed, impossibly agile and flexible, and managed to avoid being speared or cut

by the twigs and sub-branches even once… but it could not avoid the flames. The strange orange

flames separated themselves from the branch at the last moment, forming into ghostly images of

snakes, claws, and jaws, and engulfed the hapless demon rose. It let out an unearthly screech,

writhing in pain as it caught on fire, and then retreated underground so fast Zorian thought for a

moment it simply disappeared.

Apparently the angel tree could casually warp space to strike at opponents way outside its usual

range. Just how powerful was this thing?

[Go,] the angel tree urged him, and then immediately severed its contact.

There was a roar of triumph, and then the dragon mage was holding a rather thick black branch in

one of his claws, its fires sputtering and fading. The angel had paid a high price for this timely

assistance, it seemed.

Zorian immediately ordered the flying platform they were standing on to change directions and

proceed towards the nearest barrier wall at maximum speed.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Zach asked, alarmed. “Have you gone crazy!? You’re going to ram us

straight into the barrier wall!”

“It’s not going to bar our way,” Zorian hurriedly explained. “The angel just told me.”

“The angel just told you? Why didn’t it tell me? I’m the one they made a contract with, you’d think I

would be their contact,” Zach grumbled.

“You’re under mind blank,” Zorian reminded him. “And besides, I’m the one controlling the platform

we’re flying on. Contacting me is only common sense.”

The others silently observed their whispered bickering, but said nothing, opting to instead stare at

the luminous wall of light they were rapidly hurtling towards. Though Zorian noticed that Xvim was

watching it with an expression more evocative of awe and appreciation than trepidation.

“It can even selectively let things through? What a miracle of spellcasting,” Xvim said in a low voice.

Zorian sniffed disdainfully. What was so amazing about that? His defense cube did the exact same

thing!

But no, he wasn’t going to be petty and defensive about this. Not right now, anyway…

In any case, there was no time for further conversation, because mere moments later, they collided

with the barrier wall. The light parted before them like an airy curtain, caressing their face and skin

as it moved out of the way, and then they were out of the box. Everyone except Alanic flinched at the

point of impact, unconsciously expecting to get splattered against the magical barrier that had

weathered so many titanic impacts from the battle inside. The scarred battle-priest’s faith and

composure was apparently sufficiently strong that he could weather the impact without so much as a

twitch.

Zorian glanced behind him, only to see no trace of opening where they exited the barrier. The wall of

light parted before them in an instant and then closed together just as quickly.

It was also not nearly as transparent from the outside as it was from the inside. It was instead

completely opaque, effectively shrouding the shielded area from curious outsiders trying to peer in.

Zorian was ecstatic, but also a little worried. With them outside of the angel barrier and their enemies

trapped inside, Zach and Zorian could crush the cultists trying to conduct the Panaxeth releasing

ritual inside the Hole and essentially win by default. On the other hand, Zorian’s secret plan hinged

on him hitting everyone all at once with his spell, something that was impossible while Jornak and

the others were holed up in Iasku Mansion, and protected by the angel barrier. He would have to get

them out of there eventually before he could initiate the plan, and that worried him a little.

Of course, he voiced none of these thoughts. He silently directed their flying platform towards the

Hole and prepared himself for another fight. The others didn’t need any explanation to understand

what he was planning – stopping the cultists was the obvious goal.

There was, however, another problem approaching. While they had been distracted by fighting

inside the angel barrier, Eldemar’s giant eagles had been approaching the city as fast as they could.

Now, they were just about to arrive… and Zorian could see they were aiming straight at Zorian and

his flying platform. He supposed that the glowing cubical barrier the angels erected was very eye-

catching, and the fact they had just flown out of it made them obvious targets.

Zorian had no idea what the eagle mages would do. He had assumed they would recognize the

angels, but the angels were busy inside the barrier and couldn’t vouch for them. Which meant they

would probably do whatever came naturally to them in a situation like this. That… was not

encouraging. From the perspective of Eldemar’s authorities, it all probably looked like a bunch of

rogue mages fighting in the city and wrecking stuff in the process. They may very well decide to just

bring the hammer down on everyone and sort things out later. Zorian had heard that was a common

reaction to whenever mage disputes escalate into open battles inside a populated settlement – one

side may have been entirely in the right, but Eldemar’s forces only see two troublemakers

endangering innocent civilians and treat everyone as an enemy.

Zorian could only hope that the sheer scope of the fighting would give the eagle riders pause and

make them a little more cautious and discerning. The sheer amount of firepower both sides used

against each other should hopefully convince the royal forces they need to take a side instead of

behaving like the biggest bully.

Unfortunately, Zorian’s hopes were in vain. With incredible speed, the eagle riders caught up to them

and swooped in front of them, the giant eagles releasing ear-piercing screeches. It was a clear

warning that they would attack if the platform did not stop.

“Halt, in the name of the Kingdom of Eldemar!” the lead mage said in a voice amplified and distorted

by magic. “Power down your flying platform and land on the ground, now! This is your only warning!”

Zorian clacked his tongue in annoyance. He stopped the platform, but did not move to land. This

was such an annoying issue. Although Zorian was sure all of them put together were more than

enough to take out the eagle riders, it would take an unacceptable amount of time and mana. More

importantly, Zorian wasn’t sure his allies would even agree to attack Eldemar’s forces who

technically did nothing wrong. Zach doubtlessly would, but Zorian was all but certain that Alanic

would refuse to help them, and he wasn’t confident about Xvim and Daimen either.

If only the makeshift flying platform was faster than the eagles… but his defense cube was ultimately

designed for defense and not flight speed, and giant eagles were famously fast flyers.

Thankfully, the eagle riders did not associate Mrva with them, or didn’t think they could stop a

heavily-warded giant golem, so Zorian simply ordered the massive golem to continue on towards the

Hole and they let him go unimpeded. It was going be difficult to control it effectively under these

circumstances, but it was better than nothing.

“Captain,” Zorian said, his voice similarly amplified and distorted, “look around the city. It’s under

attack and we’re helping. We’ll gladly explain things later, but–”

“It wasn’t a request!” the man interrupted him impatiently. “I order you to land and explain yourselves

or we will attack you immediately!”

The eagle riders circled around them threateningly, giving the appearance of a pack of wolves just

waiting for a sign to attack.

Two things happened simultaneously, then. First, there was a commotion back at the angel barrier.

Glancing in its direction, Zorian could see Oganj repeatedly impacting the barrier of light, front claws

glowing with red light. Each time he slashed at the barrier he created large gashes in the wall that

healed almost instantly.

Secondly, Zorian realized the eagle riders didn’t have any serious mental defenses on them. They

only had a basic mental shield that couldn’t even provide a speed bump against his psychic powers.

As for the eagles, they were even worse. Completely defenseless.

“This is your last–” started the eagle mage commander, but was interrupted by a draconic roar.

Oganj had finally managed to tear a hole in the barrier large enough to squeeze himself through and

immediately tore himself out of the containment barrier the angels erected around Iasku Mansion.

The barrier quickly mended itself, but it was too late – the dragon mage was out of the box.

And riding on his back were Quatach-Ichl, Silverlake, and Jornak.

Well. So much for his worries about having to eventually lure their enemies out of the barrier.

In any case, the eagle riders were clearly surprised at the appearance of an adult dragon so close to

them, and unsure what to do for a moment. In that moment, Zorian struck. He reached out into the

minds of the giant eagles, every single one of them, and ordered them to attack Oganj while

amplifying their anger until they were completely berserk. They let out frenzied screeches and made

a beeline for the approaching dragon mage, ignoring their riders’ panicked attempts to regain

control.

He then reached towards the mind of the eagle rider commander, and forced him to make a loud

proclamation in that amplified voice of his. The man had no choice but to obey.

“Oganj! It’s the dragon mage!” the man shouted against his will. “Forget those small fries, we need to

take him down!”

“Kill the dragon!” another eagle rider agreed, also forced to do so by Zorian.

Oganj reacted exactly as Zorian hoped he would. The dragon mage was proud and aggressive, and

had clashed against Eldemar’s forces numerous times in the past. He saw nothing suspicious about

a bunch of Eldemar mages making him their priority target, and he had every intention of teaching

them a lesson. He gave a roar of challenge and shifted his focus to killing the eagle riders, ignoring

Jornak’s loud complaints that he shouldn’t get distracted.

Zorian quietly withdrew his telepathic influence from the minds of the eagle riders and ordered his

platform to continue flying towards the Hole at maximum speed. Even if they wanted to continue

bothering him, they had a more pressing problem on their hands now.

After a few seconds, he noticed that everyone except Zach was staring at him strangely.

“What?” he asked, frowning.

“You did that, didn’t you?” Alanic asked.

“Hmm? Oh yeah, definitely,” Zorian said, only understanding after a few seconds why they reacted

that way to his casual display of mind control. Sometimes he forgot that these weren’t the same

people he had worked with for over a year to figure out how to leave the time loop. Those people

had died forever, even their souls erased and denied afterlife.

“Are they going to be alright?” Alanic asked, frowning. He clearly didn’t like the idea that Zorian might

have sent the eagle riders to fight and die against their enemies with no support.

Funnily enough, it didn’t even occur to Zorian to care for their wellbeing. He thought of them as an

annoyance, and saw his actions as a form of poetic justice for impeding their mission and trying to

push them around. They came looking for trouble, and they found it.

His original self, whom Zorian killed in order to be able to stand here today, would definitely be

horrified at what he had become.

“They won’t all die,” Zorian eventually answered. “I fought with them a few times over the various

iterations of this month. They eventually retreat if the enemy inflicts enough losses on them.”

“They came here to fight for Eldemar,” Zach helpfully added. “They’re doing exactly that right now. If

they knew what we know, they would have chosen to engage Oganj anyway, even if most of them

died doing that.”

“Explaining my involvement in this is going to be hell, I can already see,” Alanic lamented.

“We did take basic precautions,” Zach said. “We’re all wearing disguises, and the battle will destroy

most of the clues and prevent normal divinations from working. Plus, we have a master mind mage

that can delete memories of people who get too close to the truth.”

“It doesn’t matter in my case,” Alanic said. “Do you know how hard it was to mobilize all these people

I recruited to fight on our side? I had to use my name and connections to make all this happen.

There is no hiding this, even if you start mind-wiping people.”

Well, if Zach was going to survive this evening, Zorian was definitely going to have to start mind-

wiping people, and sooner than anyone in this group suspected. Thankfully, nobody was in the mood

to continue this topic, both because they were now very close to the Hole, and because they were

facing yet another threat.

Jornak, Silverlake, and Quatach-Ichl were rapidly approaching, using some kind of high-speed flight

spell in an effort to catch up to them. They knew that everything was over if Zorian and the rest of

the group could face-off against the cultists alone, and they weren’t going to let it happen.

Before Zorian and the others could really start disrupting the ritual, the battle against Jornak,

Silverlake, and Quatach-Ichl began anew.

- break -

While his original body had been busy dealing with angels, demons, and eagle riders, his

simulacrum bodies had not been idle. They roamed the city and processed information that Zorian

constantly received from the multitude of remote sensors and recruited subordinates working with

the group to repel the invasion. The primary (albeit secret) task they had was to make sure the

network of glyphs he had scattered all across Cyoria remained reasonably intact. The unplanned

substitution of an entire city section with Iasku Mansion and the surrounding forest had already

blown a sizeable hole in his network, so he had to be extra vigilant, or parts of his remaining network

would become disconnected from the network as a whole, making his entire plan useless.

While doing that, however, his simulacrums also involved themselves in the fighting here and there.

These interventions were by necessity minor, since he couldn’t afford to waste too much of his mana

in peripheral areas of the city. The original body had a much more critical role to play, so the majority

of their mana reserves were reserved for his use. Fortunately, he had a perfect tool for the situation.

His mind magic, if used thoughtfully and strategically, was perfect for making large impacts in return

for minimal mana expenditures.

All around the city, strange incidents began to occur. Many of them were so subtle they could be

chalked up as coincidences. A panicked group of scattered defenders suddenly surged with

newfound confidence and ‘remembered’ where they were all supposed to converge and regroup in

event of emergency. A fleeing family received a strong hunch that the route they wanted to traverse

wasn’t safe and that they should pick another way. A large, muscular man wielding an antique

sword, clearly just a normal city worker without a hint of magic or military training, fended off an

entire pack of winter wolves all on his lonesome, allowing a nearby military group to save both him

and the people he was protecting; for some reason the winter wolves kept missing him, as if they

couldn’t see him correctly. A local dog suddenly went berserk and began barking and biting at thin

air, alerting a nearby mage to the presence of an invisible Ibasan battle group waiting in ambush.

Others were less mundane. All around the city, some people received sudden, supernatural visions

that gave them critical information about the enemy. Enemies sometimes went crazy and started

attacking their own allies for no reason, sowing chaos and discord in enemy ranks. Small animals

like bats and bugs were inordinately fond of ramming themselves straight into enemy casters’ faces

when they were in the middle of sensitive spellcasting. A young soldier suddenly fell into an obvious

trance and started describing the enemy distribution of forces to his commander, hopefully allowing

much better coordination of defending efforts in that city sector.

Meanwhile, up in the sky, iron beaks ceaselessly patrolled the city in both large and small groups.

They were Zorian’s roving eyes and blades, the small groups checking out disturbances to see if

anything interesting was happening, and the big ones converging on critical areas to give aerial

support to whatever defenders were located in the area. Each flock carried one or more telepathic

relays, allowing Zorian to both easily access their senses and occasionally take control of them to

direct them to specific spots. They were smart birds, with already existing group discipline, so he

only had to take control over the leaders in order to control the whole group… which was good,

because there was no way he would have been able to control the iron beaks otherwise.

Convenient. No wonder Sudomir had decided to use these particular birds for the invasion.

The iron beaks were bloodthirsty and their feather volleys were extremely deadly. They were fast

and agile flyers too, which allowed the flocks to simply swoop in and let loose a feather volley at the

surprised enemies, before simply flying away to engage someone else. With Zorian managing their

attacks, their strikes were far more strategic and selective than the iron beaks themselves would

have ever been on their own – they now almost exclusively targeted mages, instead of wasting their

feathers on tough targets like war trolls and other dominated monsters, usually striking when the

target was exhausted or busy dealing with something else.

Despite all of this, the scale of the invasion was vast, and Jornak had brought a large number of

fresh troops into the city when he had brought Iasku Mansion into the city. Zorian’s actions were just

a drop in the bucket, and it was hard to judge how much difference his actions made in the grand

scheme of things.

A lot of times he could do nothing but watch as the invaders killed and torched their way through the

city. He could do a lot with relatively little when he spotted an opening, but not every situation had

one. Or at least, not one that he could spot. Maybe someone smarter than him could have seen

some obvious solution that he had missed, but he was still only human, and a lot of the time he saw

no way to help without burning through his mana at an unacceptable rate.

So instead, he did nothing. He watched people fight and die over and over, across the entire city,

withholding his help because it would cost too much.

He wanted to say the experience made him sick… but the truth was that he was already somewhat

numb to it. He had seen things like this happen many times over the restarts, and had even

experienced some of these things from the invaders’ perspective due to his memory reading. Maybe

later, when the situation was over and he had time to internalize that all of this was final and

irreversible and not at all like the time loop, he would be horrified by the things he had seen and his

own lack of reaction to it, but now wasn’t the time for it.

It just wasn’t the time.

He eventually turned his attention to the Hole, where a fierce fight was happening. While Zorian and

Jornak’s groups were trapped underneath the angel barrier, the cultists had been free to proceed

towards the Hole… for a time.

There was an element that neither Zorian nor Jornak had expected. Before the cultists could even

begin setting up the ritual and start sacrificing the children, they were ambushed by a large number

of… small animals. Pigeons and cats, to be more precise. Instead of simply clawing or pecking at

the cultists, however, these cats and pigeons employed magic spells and weapons.

As the cultists were escorting their wagon of sacrificial children near one of the bigger buildings, a

handful of cats simply dropped from the roof and onto their heads. Their claws glowing white from

the effects of some unknown spell, they swung towards their targets’ necks and faces, slicing open

arteries and permanently blinding others. One of the cultists noticed the incoming attack, but he

made the mistake of meeting the eyes of a cat sitting on a nearby windowsill and was suddenly hit

by a powerful bout of vertigo that sent him reeling. He never had a chance to recover, as another cat

ripped his throat out a mere moment later.

Before the cultists could respond to this attack, a flock of pigeons swooped in, carrying a multitude of

alchemical grenades in their claws, and all hell broke loose.

Shifters, Zorian quickly realized. Cat and pigeon shifters – the two varieties that were probably most

proficient in classical spellcasting in addition to their natural shifting capabilities. And… yes, there

was the police force joining the attack now.

Hmm. Apparently Raynie and Haslush had done more in this past month than Zorian thought they

would. A surprise, but a welcome one.

Of course, while the cultists often seemed like the weakest part of the invasion from Zorian’s

perspective, they were really not so easy to dismiss for regular people. After the initial shock, the

cultists began to fight back, and they did so extremely well. After all, the leaders of the Cult of the

World Dragon were actually very powerful and capable mages. Usually they were too busy enacting

Panaxeth’s ritual to help their underlings, but at the moment this wasn’t the case, so they quickly

made their presence known. After some initial successes, the combined shifter-police forces began

to die in droves and lose their courage.

There was no way Zorian could allow this, though, so he instructed his iron beaks to help out and

started subtly and not-so-subtly directing city defenders to rush over towards the Hole and join the

battle.

Interestingly, the pigeon shifters adapted really well to the iron beaks’ assistance. Many of them

appeared to be capable of casting certain spells purely reflexively, which meant that any of the

seemingly innocuous pigeons could drop a fireball on an enemy group or summon a force barrier to

defend both themselves and the iron beaks from enemy spells. Even though Zorian didn’t attempt to

communicate with any of them, the pigeon shifters soon naturally fell into the role of support,

following iron beak flocks and shielding them against enemy fire so they could operate relatively

unmolested in the sky.

As for the cat shifters, their animal forms were mostly useful for surprise purposes and not terribly

impressive for these kind of battles, so Zorian feared they would be useless after that initial

ambush… but he was wrong. The cat shifters simply switched back into their human forms and

started contributing by casting spells normally. Amusingly, they were kind of similar to Zorian, in that

their biggest talent seemed to lay in mind magic. Zorian supposed that, since so many of them

already operated on the criminal side of things, they were less hesitant to practice mind magic than a

regular mage.

Then Mrva barged into the scene, tanking enemy spell fire like it was inconsequential and crashing

into the cultist ranks like a cannonball. The original may have been too busy elsewhere and couldn’t

come, but there was no stopping Mrva. His presence slowly but surely started to turn the tide in the

favor of Cyorian forces. The leaders of the cult were powerful, but so was Mrva.

Idly, Zorian wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for the original and his allies to simply teleport to

the Hole the moment they escaped the angel barrier, and then kill the cultists as quickly as

possible… but considering that the cultists still hadn’t even begun the ritual as of yet, maybe it was

for the best that they hadn’t done that. Who knows how Jornak would have reacted if he knew for

certain that releasing Panaxeth was impossible and that he was going to die soon. Although it may

have seemed like Zorian had neatly eliminated the threat of wraith bombs with his counter-traps, the

truth was he only had enough time and funds to make those for Cyoria. There were wraith bombs

scattered all over Eldemar and possibly beyond, and Zorian could only thank the gods that Jornak

didn’t see fit to activate them as well out of sheer spite.

And that was just the wraith bombs. Although Zorian was sure that some of Jornak’s threats were

pure bluffs, he had no doubt that the man had plenty of contingencies that would make them all

suffer if he lost. Even Zach and Zorian had made a few contingencies that would go off if they didn’t

survive this battle, so there was no way Jornak hadn’t done the same.

It still wasn’t the right time. All Zorian could do was wait and look for an opening.

- break -

Zorian stared at the three creatures in front of him. One was some kind of tiger-sized reptilian

creature that Zorian did not recognize, another was a floating orb surrounded by long whip-like

tentacles, and the third one was a gigantic green ooze the size of a small building. His defense cube

spun around him, sigils on it brightening and fading like the beat of his own heart and mechanical

parts softly shifting into various combinations. For a second, everything was still, before both sprang

into motion and the battle began anew.

The tentacle orb was the first, being the fastest. It hurled itself at Zorian with incredible speed, its

milky white body crackling with powerful electrical magic. Zorian didn’t panic, simply jumping to the

side while telekinetically enhancing his jump a little. He easily dodged out of the way of the living

cannonball, and another sidestep dodged the electrified whip the creature tried to hit him with next.

The other two creatures weren’t that far behind, though. The blue tiger-lizard thing used the

distraction created by the whip-orb to charge at him, preparing for a jump. Zorian flicked a spell

marble at the thing, creating a large detonation right in its face and blowing it back with ease. The

creature slammed into the already damaged road and promptly burst into liquid.

A mere moment later, the blue puddle of slime started to come together again, and a few seconds

later the tiger-lizard thing was intact and once again gunning for him.

As for Zorian himself, he was too busy trying to avoid being engulfed by the house-sized blob of acid

to worry about finishing the tiger-lizard thing off for good. The giant ooze was completely unlike most

oozes, and moved with speed and dexterity that no natural ooze should possess, let alone one that

size. It constantly sprouted pseudopods that lashed out at Zorian, leaving corroded cobblestones

whenever it hit, and its great weight and power allowed it to simply smash apart buildings if they

were in its way or it thought the rubble might inconvenience Zorian.

All three were working seamlessly together with one another, and showed both signs of human-level

intelligence and detailed knowledge of human spellcasting. Though one might mistake them for

some kind of exotic magical creature at first, Zorian knew he wasn’t looking at a natural creation. If

Zorian had to guess, he would say these beings were something akin to living potions – an

alchemical liquid animated by either captured souls or elemental spirits. Possibly both – a multitude

of captured souls for providing abundant mana, and water elementals for actually controlling the

liquid.

A grating, cackling laugh rose into the air behind the giant ooze. Silverlake seemed to be mighty

pleased at how her minions were faring against Zorian.

“You shouldn’t have sent your metal toy away,” she crowed. “Maybe you’d actually have a chance

against me and my lovelies if you had this ‘Mrva’ at your side.”

Zorian said nothing, simply scanning his surroundings for a way he could bypass the potion

elementals and strike at Silverlake. It didn’t look like he did, but that was because he was primarily

looking through the eyes of a small flock of iron beaks circling the skies above the battlefield rather

than trying to use divinations in the middle of a battle.

The whip-orb tried to rush at him again, but Zorian fired a thin line of force at it that speared it right

through. It immediately burst into a cloud of electrified potion droplets, causing Zorian to wince. This

wasn’t a good way to hold the orb at bay, it seemed.

‘This is so frustrating,’ Zorian lamented in his head. ‘I spent a decade inside a time loop. You’d think

I would have encountered every type of enemy there is!’

“I hope you realize we found out where you stashed your little sister and her cat shifter friend to keep

them safe. Our forces are attacking them even as we speak,” Silverlake said, punctuating her threat

with her usual annoying cackle.

Zorian narrowed his eyes at her, but did not let her distract him. This was a blatant attempt to

demoralize him, and he wouldn’t fall for it.

Not that he thought she was lying. He had known for a while now that Kirielle and Nochka were

being besieged in their hideouts, but there was little he could do. He could only hope that the

Taramatula guards and mercenaries Daimen hired would be able to protect them, or that the

miniature bodyguard golems he made for them would step up if they couldn’t.

“I hope you realize the Cult of the World Dragon hasn’t even begun their ritual,” Zorian fired back. He

knew he shouldn’t talk in the middle of the battle, but her mentioning the attack on Kirielle and how

he was essentially forced to ignore it struck a nerve and he couldn’t help it. “Look around us. You

clearly can’t deal with me and neither can your allies deal with my allies. You won’t win anything by

keeping us busy.”

As if by some cosmic joke, his statement was punctuated by a loud detonation as an ominous purple

sun exploded in the sky nearby, casting the entire city in a deep purple glow for a moment. An

aftershock of Quatach-Ichl’s battle against Daimen, Xvim, and Alanic.

Jornak and Zach were also having their own fight nearby, though Zorian could not see it. Jornak had

used some kind of strange ability granted to him by Panaxeth to shroud an entire section of the city

in thick white mist that no spell could penetrate into. Offensive spells simply sank into the mist and

disappeared without a trace, and divination spells went awry when directed at the area.

Zorian wasn’t terribly worried about Zach, though. Zach had shown himself to be noticeably stronger

than Jornak in their past clashes, so he doubted this move was enough to tip the scales. More likely

than not, this was just Jornak stalling until Quatach-Ichl and Oganj could finish off their opponents so

they can gang up on them three-on-one.

“You are such a fool, Zorian,” Silverlake said. A bunch of fire spells on parabolic trajectories came

flying over the giant ooze and straight at Zorian, but he dispelled them with ease. “We could have

both profited off this if you had agreed to work with me. We could have opened a small crack in

Panaxeth’s prison and then immediately mended it. My oath to the primordial would have been

technically fulfilled, and the city would be left standing. Hell, we could have sabotaged the whole

invasion from within. Imagine how many lives that would save. Instead you insist on staying with a

dead man compromised beyond all belief. Are you gay? Is this what’s going on?”

“There is no way to fix Panaxeth’s prison once it cracks,” Zorian told her, not rising to her bait. He

telekinetically seized a large piece of a nearby ruined wall and hurled it at the giant ooze. It failed to

punch through and instead got stuck inside the green slime that made up its body. “You’re just

comforting yourself with nonsense. You took Panaxeth’s offer because you thought it was a sure

thing, as opposed to our own escape plan, which would have required you to trust another human

being for once in your life. Now that this ‘sure thing’ is screwing you over, you’re grasping at straws.”

“It’s still a sure thing! You think we need those shifter children for the ritual?” Silverlake cackled.

“Have you forgotten these bodies me and Red Robe have are made by Panaxeth? Both of us

contain enough of Panaxeth’s essence to form a link to him and crack this prison open. We kept the

child sacrifice just to distract you.”

Zorian scowled. That… made a disturbing amount of sense. The shifter children collectively had only

a tiny amount of primordial essence in them, so a mass sacrifice was needed to get enough material

to form a key, but Jornak and Silverlake were specifically incarnated into the real world by Panaxeth

to help his release. He probably had no shortage of his own essence and it was of no use to him in

his prison.

Any response he might have given was postponed as a veritable rain of alchemical bombs rained

down from the sky around him, forcing him to dodge and shield himself from their effects. Worse,

some of the alchemical mixtures reformed themselves into tiny liquid animals soon after detonation

and started attacking him. Smaller versions of the three creatures he was already dealing with,

obviously. So annoying.

“You’re the one controlling the birds above us, right?” Silverlake continued. “You can see through

their eyes, so I’m sure you can tell how Oganj’s battle is progressing.”

Zorian ‘glanced’ at the battle in question and sighed internally. The performance of Eldemar’s eagle

mages was praiseworthy. Any compulsion Zorian might have placed on them had long since worn

off, but they kept fighting Oganj regardless and they held their own admirably.

But Oganj was still a dragon mage, and one famous even among his own kind. Even as Zorian

watched, Oganj pointed his claw at one of the eagle riders and an expanding ball of razor-sharp

threads exploded around him. If this was the start of the battle, the eagle rider in question would

have evaded or shielded himself against the attack, but by now he was too exhausted and wounded

to resist effectively. The tangled mass of severing threads instantly turned both him and his giant

eagle into a bloody mess. Blood and chunks of flesh began to slowly fall to the ground.

The eagle riders weren’t going to last much longer, and when they decided to cut their losses and

flee, Oganj was going to come here to turn the tides of battle.

He glanced further into the distance, where the angel cube was located, but the cube was opaque

from the outside and he couldn’t see anything. He had no idea what was happening inside.

“What’s your point?” Zorian asked, a spark of light entering his eyes as he finally spotted an

opportunity. “You aren’t still trying to turn me to your side, are you?”

“Heavens, no,” Silverlake said. “Tell you what, though… if you give me the imperial orb, I’ll let you

flee the city and pretend I couldn’t stop you.”

The old witch really had a talent for getting under people’s skin, Zorian had to give her that.

He made his move. The whip-orb and the tiger-lizard had just tried to attack him together and landed

very close to each other. He exploited this ruthlessly by casting a rather obscure spell on the section

of the road they were standing on, ripping it straight out of the ground and catapulting it straight into

the sky and away from his current position.

Before Silverlake could react to this, he mentally activated the explosives he snuck into the chunk of

the ruined wall he had flung at the giant ooze. The wall section, still floating inside the ooze, blew up

in a spectacular explosion that burst the gigantic potion elemental like an overripe melon.

It didn’t actually kill it, but it didn’t have to. It was temporarily incapacitated until it could reform, and

that was all that mattered.

The path was open.

He teleported in front of the surprised Silverlake. She had hurriedly shielded herself to protect herself

from the chunks of her own potion elemental flying everywhere, and was currently ill suited to protect

herself.

The moment Zorian blinked into existence in front of her she sneered at him with an expression of

smug triumph and he detected the trap ward she placed on the area activating. She knew he was

coming.

Zorian’s mind went into overdrive. Time seemed to slow down. Elsewhere, his simulacrums stopped

what they were doing as the information about the ward was dissected and analyzed by multiple

minds bouncing ideas and theories between each other. Before the ward had time to fully activate,

Zorian had figured out what it did and where its flaws were.

Wordlessly, he stomped his foot and sent streams of non-structured magic all around him, poking

and disrupting the rapidly-forming structure of the ward. Simultaneously, he fired off a simple magic

missile spell at a seemingly innocuous glyph faintly carved into the nearby cobblestones, destroying

it utterly.

The entire ward suddenly imploded upon itself, carved sigils burning out in a flash of blue light.

Silverlake stumbled back, her mind hit by the backlash of the ward control function suddenly sending

a bunch of gibberish at her. Before she could recover, Zorian was already casting spell after spell at

her. Force projectiles powerful enough to turn stone to powder, fire spells hot enough to melt steel,

potent disintegration beams… the attack kept coming and coming, giving Silverlake no chance to

take a breath and center herself. She tried to activate some kind of recall object to teleport away but

Zorian blocked it from working. Finally, her inexperience with these kinds of battles began to show,

and her shields broke.

A force projectile hit her straight in the head, and half of her face instantly became a blood mist.

Instead of stopping, Zorian blew up the rest of her head as well, and blew a bunch of holes in her

torso for good measure as well.

For a second, the scene was quiet.

But something was wrong. Her headless, mutilated body staggered back but didn’t fall. Instead, flesh

grew out of her wounds at a terrifying rate, quickly reforming her head and healing the rest of her

wounds.

Zorian couldn’t help but be disturbed. Even if she had drunk a portion of troll regeneration or

something, a destroyed head was still a killing strike. He tried to incinerate her just in case, engulfing

her rapidly regenerating form in an intense cone of flame. Unfortunately, by now the giant ooze had

managed to reform itself and launched another attack at Zorian, forcing him to break off the attack

before he could fully reduce her to ash.

The moment he stopped, the charred, skeletal corpse of Silverlake again started to regenerate at a

terrifying rate, regrowing muscles and skin at a speed that even trolls and hydras would find

amazing. Especially considering the damage was inflicted by fire.

The half-healed body of Silverlake started to shake and gurgle, before breaking into painful coughing

and spewing out blood everywhere. After a few seconds, Zorian realized this was Silverlake trying to

cackle.

“See? You can’t kill me,” Silverlake said, almost completely recovered now. “It was a sure thing, and

you are the fool here. This was so very worth it.”

“No one is unkillable,” Zorian said, launching a few more attack spells at her. She started defending

herself again, though, so none of them actually landed on her this time. Hmm. She wouldn’t be

defending herself if being hurt was inconsequential. She had a limit, somewhere. “I bet if I keep

hurting you, you will eventually die for good.”

“Eventually,” she agreed, firing some spells back at him half-heartedly. The giant ooze tried to

interpose itself between him and Silverlake again, but Zorian refused to let her out of his line of fire

again. “But I bet it will take longer to exhaust my regeneration than it will to exhaust your mana

reserves. Even with that cube acting as free defense, you still have to burn through your reserves to

hurt me. And besides, Oganj will soon-”

A sound reminiscent of a ceramic plate breaking into pieces resonated somewhere in the distance.

The angel cube, long silent, shattered and faded away, revealing the result of the angel-demon

battle.

The angel tree was triumphant. Neither the massive demon torso nor its accompanying demon

horde could be seen anywhere.

The angel had paid a heavy price for its victory. One of its main trunks was merely a stump now, and

two of the others had the majority of its branches ripped and sliced off. Many of its eyes were

missing, and the strange orange fires were no longer covering the whole tree, but were instead thin

and faded. All but three of its accompanying wing balls were gone, and one of the surviving wing

balls was clearly missing a lot of its wings and zigzagging across the sky as if drunk. Of the sinuous

lion-serpent things that created the barrier, there was no trace. Maybe they used up all of their power

to maintain that thing?

Regardless, the angel tree did not rest or waste time. It shook itself slightly, flexing its branches like

a fighter warming himself up before the fight, and then immediately accelerated like a cannonball

toward Oganj.

The dragon mage let loose a roar of frustration at all these distractions, but made no attempt to flee.

He clearly had every intention of fighting the wounded angel.

Although she did not have flocks of iron beaks acting as her eyes all over the city, Silverlake must

have seen the event in some way, because she immediately scowled in response.

“Don’t think you-” she began.

But Zorian wasn’t listening. Now that he knew Oganj was taken care of, there was no reason to keep

this in reserve anymore. He reached into his pocket and threw a palm-sized metal ball on the ground

in front of himself and Silverlake.

He then immediately withdrew to a safe distance. The contents of the pocket dimension prison inside

that ball were less a controlled weapon, and more a bloodthirsty maniac you pointed at the enemy

and hoped for the best.

Silverlake’s eyes widened in fear and shock when the grey hunter materialized in front of her, and all

confidence seemed to drain out of her posture. She started screaming a long string of curses as she

desperately fought to keep the killer spider away from her.

Zorian kept himself well back from the two combatants, somewhat unsure if he wanted to involve

himself. Although he had managed to capture the grey hunter and stuff it into a pocket dimension, he

did not actually control it by any measure. It was a feral magical beast released off its chain, and if

he wasn’t careful, it could easily shift its attention to him instead. Thus, he mostly stayed on the

sidelines and watched the battle.

Eventually, though, Silverlake started to use the giant ooze she had at her disposal to take control of

the grey hunter’s movements and Zorian decided he had to intervene. As amazing as the grey

spider was, the giant ooze was huge and could keep the spider away from Silverlake through sheer

mass alone.

He never got the chance to involve himself, though. Before he made his move, the giant ooze

suddenly froze, shuddered slightly, and then collapsed into an inert puddle of acidic slime. Well,

more like a small lake, but still. It was dead.

“What!? Who are you? How do you know how to do this?” Silverlake said, looking left and right for

the perpetrator while running from the grey hunter, who now had an open path forwards and wasted

no time in going after her again.

The other person did not answer at first. Instead, a crude but effective warding circle suddenly

sprang up around the area where Silverlake and the grey hunter were fighting, trapping her with the

murder-spider.

Zorian suddenly realized what was happening. He could recognize this ward easily enough, and

there was only one person he ever saw using it. He had to say, he didn’t expect this…

Soon, Zorian’s unlikely ally stepped out from the shadow of a nearby building, dropping her stealth

spell in the process.

It was Silverlake. Old Silverlake. The same annoying witch that Zorian remembered from the time

loop, her body slightly hunched and ravaged by old age and her face was covered in wrinkles.

“You!? What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” Young Silverlake yelled, outraged.

The old Silverlake did not answer her. She slowly began to walk around the warding circle in which

she trapped her copy, tapping the borders with her staff and methodically reinforcing the ward so it

was harder to break. Her expression was grave and serious. There was no cackling this time, no

stupid jokes or attempt to throw her opponent out of balance with words. It was actually kind of eerie

to see Silverlake behaving like this.

“Don’t you know who I am?” Young Silverlake protested. “I’m you! I’m you from the future! I know

that brat over there already told you this, so why-”

“If you’re really my copy, then you know what happened the last time we made a copy of ourselves,

and let it do as it pleased,” old Silverlake said calmly, not stopping her work or even glancing at her

younger self.

The young Silverlake seemed to be momentarily at a loss for words and remained silent.

“Exactly,” old Silverlake concluded. “It’s only a matter of time before you come for me. My home, my

connections, my life… you want it all, and you clearly outstrip me in power. This is my best

opportunity to remove you as a threat. I must take it.”

“You ungrateful withered bitch!” young Silverlake screamed angrily. The grey hunter took advantage

of her emotional instability and managed to sink its fangs into her forearm, pumping it full of shaping-

disrupting poison… unfortunately, Silverlake reacted quickly and immediately sliced her own arm off

at the shoulder with a severing spell. Her regeneration immediately started growing it back. “I should

have killed you immediately after coming here!”

“Probably,” old Silverlake said, shrugging her shoulders.

Zorian took one more look at the situation, thought about it for a moment, and then decided to let the

two Silverlakes deal with each other and move on to other targets. He could see that Jornak’s mist

was starting to thin out and evaporate, which probably meant his battle with Zach was close to

ending.

It was time.

He jumped into the air, his defense cube dutifully following after him, and used a fast flying spell to

quickly reach the Hole. The cultists were still holding their own against the combined forces

assaulting them, but they were exhausted and unprepared for Zorian’s arrival. He immediately

started scything them down, butchering the whole group of them with a severing whip while trusting

his cube to protect him from retaliation.

Simultaneously, he took closer control over Mrva again, and the golem’s attacks suddenly became a

lot more accurate and strategic.

After only a handful of seconds, most of the cultists realized they stood absolutely no chance against

Zorian and his golem, and their discipline fell apart. They started to panic and run, ignoring the

threats their leaders spouted at them.

As Zorian suspected, his actions provoked an immediate reaction. In the distance, Oganj shouted a

bunch of expletives and then separated himself from the angel he was fighting in order to rush

towards the Hole. He received a deep gash in his flank for turning his back to his opponent like that,

but he bore it with barely a grimace. Then, not far from where Zorian was cutting down the hapless

cultists, a huge blast of magical force leveled an entire section of the city and a pitch-black skeleton

suddenly flew out of it, flying at Zorian at maximum speed. Zorian quickly scanned the area

Quatach-Ichl left and breathed a sigh of relief. Xvim, Alanic, and Daimen were in extremely poor

shape, but they were still alive. Xvim was unconscious and Daimen was severely wounded and

bleeding, but Alanic was quick to administer aid so they should both survive.

They should…

But no, he couldn’t get distracted. Oganj and Quatach-Ichl were both coming here, but the lich was

closer and would be here sooner.

Although he was just a mindless golem, he couldn’t help but glance at Mrva looming above him a

little sadly.

‘It was nice knowing you, Mrva…’

Being a mindless construct, Mrva did not answer him. He simply turned towards the rapidly

approaching Quatach-Ichl and spread his giant arms as if offering the incoming lich a hug.

To his credit, Quatach-Ichl immediately understood that something was wrong and tried to swerve

out of the way. It didn’t help him. There was no dodging this. Mrva’s chest opened up like a metal

flower, exposing a complicated magical device with a glass tank acting as a centerpiece. Trapped

within the glass tank was a large soulseizer chrysanthemum, which immediately woke up from its

stupor and focused on the only target his current prison allowed him to perceive – Quatach-Ichl.

Normally, the flower wouldn’t have been powerful enough to threaten the ancient lich, especially

from this distance, but its current housing wasn’t just a prison. It was an amplifier and a focus device,

vastly increasing the flower’s range and power.

Without reservations, Mrva immediately started burning through his entire internal supplies of mana,

amplifying the flower’s attack more and more. It still wasn’t enough to actually seize Quatach-Ichl’s

soul and draw it into the flower, but that was okay – Zorian did not actually expect it to be able to do

that. All he needed it to do was incapacitate Quatach-Ichl for a little while, just like the

chrysanthemum had done to Zach and Zorian the first time they had encountered it.

The amplified soulseizer chrysanthemum did just that. Hit by the flower’s attack, Quatach-Ichl lost

control over his flight spell and plowed straight into the building in front of him before

unceremoniously dropping to the ground. Being an undying lich made out of magically-reinforced

bones, this high-speed impact and subsequent fall did not really hurt him much. But it did make him

stationary.

The defense cube behind Zorian suddenly restructured itself into a ring-shaped construct. The time-

frozen spell Zorian had previously captured from Oganj was suddenly released and immediately

continued its attack, this time targeting Quatach-Ichl.

The lich shakily picked himself up from the ground, fighting off the still ongoing effects of the

soulseizer chrysanthemum through sheer willpower, and lifted his head just in time to see the giant

incandescent projectile, equivalent in power to an artillery magic spell, hurling towards him. If he’d

had only a few more seconds, he would have shrugged off the attack and dodged, shielded, or

teleported away… but he didn’t have a few more seconds.

Before the projectile even reached him, the light suddenly died in his dead eye sockets and his

bones started to fall back to the ground. He chose to retreat back to his phylactery on his own rather

than be beaten.

Moments later, the dragon magic spell hit his remains dead-center, and the entire area was

consumed by a blinding fireball that vaporized everything around it.

As for Mrva, his role in this was finished. His chest folded up again to prevent the chrysanthemum

from targeting anyone else, and then he simply went limp. His internal mana reserves were gone

and he could no longer move or fight.

“Contemptible thief!” Oganj shouted in outrage, getting increasingly close. The angel tree was hot on

his tail. “Is your kind capable of doing anything on your own!?”

What was he talking about? Dragons were infamous for bullying everything and everyone around

them for things they wanted. Besides, you would never see a dragon build a gun or a train, so there

were at least a couple of things humans invented on their own.

He didn’t bother saying any of this, though. He simply teleported close to the blasted site and fired a

gust of wind at it, getting rid of the smoke and dust. He was met with the sight of molten ground, still

visibly burning hot, with a small crater in the middle. Only one thing survived the magical

conflagration – the imperial crown that once stood on Quatach-Ichl’s head, still completely

untouched.

Divine artifacts were not easy to destroy, especially ones of this caliber.

Zorian quickly produced a force whip and used it to yank the crown towards him. He was careful not

to touch it at first, but it turned out to be completely cool to the touch.

He glanced to the side, where Zach and Jornak were facing off against each other. He got a little

distracted while fighting Quatach-Ichl, but at some point the mist Jornak had created completely

disappeared, and the two combatants reappeared. Thankfully, Zach managed to keep Jornak from

interfering, so their fellow time traveler was unable to save the lich.

They both looked pretty terrible. Zach was bleeding from his forehead and limping. Whatever Jornak

had done with that mist apparently did much to even the odds between them, since Zorian did not

think Jornak could hurt Zach that much in a fair fight. As for Jornak, his fancy red robe was almost

entirely shredded and he was gasping for breath as if he had been running for hours, but his skin

was suspiciously free of any scrapes and bruises. Zorian suspected he was similar to Silverlake, and

that any wound inflicted on him would heal quickly. Maybe not on the level of Silverlake, since her

powers seemed to focus entirely on indestructibility, while Jornak had this weird mist thing in his

arsenal, but still.

Zorian twirled Quatach-Ichl’s crown with his finger, giving Jornak a cheeky smile.

“Like that means anything,” Jornak spat angrily. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Zach for even a

moment, but he had clearly seen Zorian’s gesture. Despite what he said, the emotion in his voice

told Zorian that he was very much bothered by the way things were going. “This isn’t over! The

crown is useless to you in the short term, anyway!”

Before Zorian could answer, he was forced to dodge a spell from Oganj, who had finally arrived to

the scene. Thankfully, the shifters and police forces had already rescued the shifter children by this

point, and hurriedly left the area, so he didn’t have to worry about them becoming collateral damage.

“Out of everyone here, I like you the least!” Oganj said, slicing a nearby building in half with a blue

beam of force and nearly taking Zorian’s head off. “You’re a sleazy weakling who fights with tricks

and schemes!”

“You’re allied with Silverlake,” Zorian countered. “You have no room to talk!”

Oganj’s response was a palm thrust that flattened the entire area he was standing on. Thankfully, by

that point he had already teleported away to a nearby rooftop.

He clacked his tongue. Though he could keep the dragon mage at bay for a while, he had to say this

wasn’t a good position to be in. He wasn’t a heavy hitter. He couldn’t tangle with Oganj for long.

He mentally calculated things in his head. Should he do it now? Having Oganj around was very

suboptimal, but if he had to do it now… he might be able to pull it off. The dragon was busy fighting

off the angel tree at the same time as fighting Zorian, so maybe…

[Angel,] Zorian told the celestial telepathically, [what are the chances of you winning against the

dragon and driving him off?]

[On my own?] the angel guessed, correctly. [A coin toss.]

[How about keeping him completely busy for an hour?] Zorian tried.

[A coin toss,] the angel replied.

“Okay,” Zorian mumbled quietly.

He didn’t like those odds. He glanced at the imperial crown in his hand and suddenly remembered

his conversation with Silverlake.

Why was Oganj fighting them, anyway? The Kingdom of Eldemar was his sworn enemy, yes, and he

would no doubt love to see Cyoria burned to the ground, but there was no way he just teamed up

with Jornak just to see the city burn. He was promised something, and it had to be big in order to

move a dragon mage of his caliber to do this.

Was it bigger than a divine artifact?

Let’s find out.

[Angel, catch,] Zorian sent the celestial telepathically, before throwing the crown in the sky towards

the angel and accelerating it telekinetically so it could reach the celestial high in the sky.

[This is useless to me,] the angel pointed out disapprovingly, but it humored him anyway, and

quickly snatched the crown with one of its branches.

[I have an idea. Please play along,] Zorian told it, before turning towards the dragon mage that was

currently busy defending himself against the angel tree.

“Dragon!” he shouted, “I have given the angel the imperial crown!”

“Why the hell would I care?” Oganj shouted back. “It can’t use it!”

“But you can!” Zorian shouted back. “If you agree to stop fighting us and leave the city, the angel will

promise to give you the imperial crown at the end of the day! A genuine divine artifact that can

increase your mana reserves! There is no other like this anywhere in the world!”

Oganj suddenly stopped and put some distance between himself and the angel, eyeing it

speculatively. The angel hovered in place, not pursuing hostilities for the moment.

“Oganj, don’t you dare!” Jornak shouted angrily. There was a trace of panic in his voice. “You know

what’s going to happen if you do this! Quatach-Ichl is going to come after you! I will come after you!

And you will not receive a single god damned thing I promised you!”

But Oganj wasn’t listening. There was a shine of greed in his eyes now, and he studied Zorian with

increased focus now.

“You are the one who has the imperial orb, right? The one with the portable palace inside?” Oganj

suddenly asked. He didn’t wait for Zorian’s answer. “Throw that in as well and I’ll leave the city and

trouble you no more.”

“Oganj, you son of a bitch!” Jornak raged.

“Done,” Zorian said. He didn’t even think twice about giving up the imperial orb. Losing it was painful,

but his need of making the dragon mage go away was greater.

He could always try to recover it later.

He withdrew the imperial orb out of his pocket and threw it at the angel, accelerating it telekinetically

like he did the crown. The angel caught it easily, sequestering it safely within its branches.

“I hereby make a promise, backed by the high heavens, that if you leave the city now and stay

away from it for 24 hours, I will give you these two artifacts that have been entrusted to me just

now,” the angel told the dragon mage. “May the high heavens strip me of my rank and strike me

down should I break it.”

“Hmm,” Oganj hummed appreciatively. “I wouldn’t trust most creatures, but an angel wouldn’t lie. I

accept.”

And then Oganj turned towards the northern forest in the distance and simply flew away from the

city. The angel seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if it wanted to tell Zorian something, before it

simply followed after the dragon mage.

Jornak was clearly fuming with anger right now, but he still wasn’t willing to quit. If anything, his

attacks on Zach started getting more frenzied and reckless, his breathing harder and harder.

Zorian took a deep breath. It was time. There would never be any better time than this.

His mind blended with that of his simulacrums. The network of sigils he had scattered across the city

sprang into life, giving him reach across the entire city. The multitude of aranea he had brought into

the city, mostly quiet until now, established contact with his mind.

He used a short-range teleportation spell to transport himself as close as possible to the two fighters.

And then he lunged at both of them.

Chapter 104

I Win (I)

He was Zach Noveda, the last surviving member of Noble House Noveda, the chosen of the

angels…

…and he had won.

He honestly never thought he would win. He wanted to win, of course. He wanted to know what kind

of wonders the world beyond this month had in store for him. He wanted to rebuild his house and

make his caretaker pay for what he had done to him. He wanted to have friends and lovers that

would never forget him. But this wish… it was merely a wistful dream, flickering in the back of his

mind and refusing to die. He didn’t seriously consider it, and not just because of the stupid angel

contract and its impossible conditions. The truth was, he’d kind of given up a long time ago.

He had tried to beat the invasion so many times, attempt after attempt, idea after idea, until

eventually, he became convinced this was his fate. To stay there forever, in an endlessly looping

world. All this power and knowledge, all the revelations about his past life, all the insights into people

around him… the time loop dangled these things over his head, but it was all meaningless because

he couldn’t get out.

Stopping the invasion of Cyoria was the key. He knew this. Somehow, deep down in his soul, he

knew this. But he couldn’t do it, no matter how many times he tried. It was fine while he was still

learning things, becoming a better mage, and brimming with ideas… but slowly, he started to slow

down. He had learned everything he possibly could about the invaders themselves. Advancing his

magic became harder and harder, each new spell or training method giving ever smaller

improvements. His inspiration began to dry out.

And yet he still couldn’t get out. He was as good as he realistically would ever be, and yet it wasn’t

enough to stop the invasion. His best wasn’t enough. That’s when he realized he wouldn’t be getting

out.

He wouldn’t ever be getting out.

And then he met Zorian. His friend was… alright. He scared him with his behavior from time to time,

and he wished he was easier to talk to and more fun to hang out with, but hey. You can’t have

everything. More importantly, he was driven. He had that spark to keep going that had mostly died in

Zach a long time ago. He had ideas that would have never even occurred to Zach, and methods that

were alien to Zach’s way of thinking. It was new and refreshing, and it reignited that spark of hope in

him that refused to fully die.

A long time ago, when Zach had only begun figuring out the time loop and his skills were still

growing, his pride would have bristled at the idea of just letting his new friend take the lead in how

they should proceed with their escape plan or go about honing their skills. Alas, that was a long time

ago. By the time Zach met Zorian, the time loop had already grounded him, and he was entirely

content to simply act as support. He stepped aside and let Zorian plan their escape and set their

short-term goals, trusting his new friend to get them out of their looping nightmare and simply

steering him away from his more… dubious choices.

In the end, that path had led him here: locked in a deadly battle against his other time travelling

companion – Red Robe. Or Jornak. Whatever. He would always be Red Robe to Zach, in all

honesty. Even now he was wearing that stupid red robe of his to hide his appearance.

He had trapped Zach in some kind of strange dimensional labyrinth, at first – a mirror image of the

city covered in thick mist that severely limited Zach’s vision while allowing Red Robe to move around

in some strange manner that Zach found hard to understand at first. Red Robe clearly thought of him

as some kind of dumb brute that wouldn’t be able to deal with this kind of environment, but Zach

hadn’t spent all those years in the time loop for nothing, and his knowledge of dimensionalism had

reached incredible heights while he had been working with Zorian and others to create a viable

escape route into the real world.

Red Robe bragged a lot about this misty labyrinth world while he and Zach fought. An attempt to

demoralize him, maybe? Maybe he couldn’t see all that well in there either, and wanted Zach to

verbally respond so he could lock onto his position more securely? In any case, Red Robe said this

misty world was primordial magic granted to him by Panaxeth. A place isolated from the real world,

impossible to escape.

Place largely removed from the real world… impossible to escape… ha. Wasn’t that almost exactly

the description of the time loop? Hadn’t Zach helped Zorian learn how to punch a hole through it so

he could escape?

Red Robe thought Zach was a dumb brute, but Zach had figured his little trick out within a minute of

arriving there. Just like the time loop was centered on Panaxeth, this world of mists was centered

around Red Robe. There was no point looking for an exit in the environment around them. The exit

was Red Robe.

The fight between them lasted a while, but eventually Zach managed to maneuver things in the right

direction. He had to let one of Red Robe’s kinetic spells clip him in the leg, leaving him limping, but it

was of no importance. It was a relatively light wound, and he had drunk a potion of regeneration

before the battle. His leg would be fine soon enough. What was important was that he used the

opportunity to hit Red Robe with a dimensional spell designed specifically to punch holes in these

kind of prisons. It was literally one-of-a-kind, a product of their intense research near the end of the

time loop, and Red Robe clearly had no idea how to deal with it.

Zach had expected to punch a literal hole in the misty world, but it turned out that Red Robe’s little

creation was incomparable to that of Panaxeth, even if they had the same origin. The moment it was

forcibly punctured, the mist started to thin and fade, until the entire world quietly disappeared at

some point, shunting them back to the real world.

They came back just in time to see Zorian take out Quatach-Ichl. It filled Zach with complex feelings

to see Zorian best his oldest enemy so seemingly easily. He knew that a lot of work and preparation

went into this victory, and that it was not nearly as easy as it looked, but… it still made him a little

jealous. Just a little bit.

Red Robe, on the other hand, was just mad. He attacked Zach with increased ferocity to vent his

frustration, and Zach matched it without any reservations. Black swords made out of dimensional

forces slashed at Jornak, cutting deep gouges as he dodged out of the way. Tiny incandescent suns

zipped around with the speed and agility of a swallow, the ground exploded into stone spears that

then exploded into thousands of needle-like shards, rays of electrified light surged forward while

evading obstacles like immaterial snakes, and the air itself was whipped into a miniature tornado

centered on Zach. He may have failed in a lot of areas of his life, but if there was one thing Zach

Noveda felt supremely confident in, that was his combat skills. He was good at fighting, and he loved

doing it. It rejuvenated him to fight worthy opponents, made him feel alive.

He looked at his opponent, his red robe long since tattered, and met the man’s eyes, trying to jog his

memory. To remember the time they apparently met and became friends. Alas, nothing came to his

mind. There was no memory, no instinctive knowledge, not even a feeling of déjà vu. The man was a

complete stranger.

Red Robe. Jornak. The man who apparently betrayed him and tampered with his mind, leaving him

even more lost inside the time loop than he already was. Zach was angry at the man for what he had

done… but if he was honest with himself, not that angry. He didn’t actually remember the betrayal,

and he was always a relatively easygoing guy. Even so, tracking the man down and making him pay

for what he had done had been the driving force of his life for a while now. He didn’t think it was the

effect of any magical compulsion or anything… he just found hating the man to be convenient.

Invigorating. Focusing on Red Robe and how he messed him up gave Zach a goal in life that he had

lacked for so long, so how he could not go after him?

Plus, the man was clearly a total nutcase. He wasn’t an empath like Zorian, but he didn’t need to be

one to get a read on the guy. Even more than Zach himself, he was dead inside. The next round of

continental wars was going to be bad enough without a guy like this throwing oil into the fire. He had

to go.

Then Zorian made Oganj go away. He did it in such a hilarious way, too! Except for the part where

he gave up the imperial orb to make it happen, that part was honestly awful. Hadn’t they agreed the

orb would go to him after the month was over, since he got Princess? The asshole had no right to

give it away! Hell, he didn’t even try to negotiate with the stupid lizard…

Oh well. Truthfully, the idea he would get to enjoy the imperial orb, or anything else for that matter,

was just… a wistful dream. The angel contract hung like a sword above his head, ready to strike. Its

terms were impossible to fulfill. No matter what happened, Zach only had a little time left.

Or so he thought at the time, anyway.

Without warning, Zorian teleported near the site of Zach’s battle with Red Robe. Zach remembered

feeling a flash of anger in response, even if he stayed quiet. It made sense for Zorian to help bring

down Red Robe as quickly as possible, but this was the final stretch of the battle and Zach was

enjoying himself. This was the last fun thing he was ever going to do in his life, did Zorian really have

to take it away from him?

What happened next shocked him completely. Without saying anything, Zorian simply lunged at Red

Robe, rapidly entering melee range with the man while charging some kind of spell Zach didn’t

recognize.

Though angry, exhausted, and focused on Zach, Red Robe reacted quickly. He instantly spun to the

side to face this new opponent, drawing a knife from his belt in a smooth, practiced motion.

No, it was not just a knife, Zach realized. It was the imperial dagger. Red Robe must have quietly

stolen it from the Royal Vaults at some point. It wasn’t that surprising – the man must have gotten

quite proficient at it over the restarts – but he thought the dagger wasn’t that useful?

Red Robe’s expression alone told Zach that he had thought wrong. An expression of pure glee and

hate shone on the man’s face, as if he hoped this very thing would happen and couldn’t believe

Zorian was stupid enough to grant him this opportunity.

Zach hastily launched a fast-moving spell at the two, trying to blast them apart from each other, but

he wasn’t fast enough. The dagger shone with a faint purple light as Red Robe thrust it forward

towards Zorian’s face. Zorian did nothing to dodge or shield himself with magic, but that protective

cube he made quietly interposed itself in the path of the knife.

Zorian’s faith in his grand creation proved to be severely misplaced, however. As great as his skills

at artificing were, the dagger was a genuine divine artifact. It sliced straight through the cube like it

was made of paper and stabbed forward, impaling Zorian straight through the neck.

Simultaneously, Zorian’s glowing hand slammed straight into Red Robe’s chest, blowing a massive

hole straight through his chest and causing some kind of faint blue waves to resonate across the

man’s entire body.

And then Zorian’s damaged defense cube detonated in a massive explosion that not only blew

Zorian and Red Robe away from each other like rag dolls, but also flung Zach back into the nearby

building.

Zach wasn’t really hurt. It wasn’t the first time he was flung back into a wall. He cushioned his impact

with the wall with a quick magic, expertly landing on his feet. He quickly scanned the area and found

Zorian lying on his back some distance away.

He rushed towards the boy to provide aid but stopped when he got close enough to really see him.

He wasn’t moving. His eyes, blank and glassy, remained open. His chest didn’t move. And the

imperial dagger was still stuck up to the hilt in his neck, and his whole body was full of serrated metal

bits sticking out his skin – the remains of his defense device driven deep into his flesh by the force of

the explosion.

He stared at his friend for a few seconds, overcome in disbelief, before walking forwards. He cast a

quick diagnostic spell and slowly, hesitantly placed his hand on him. He wasn’t that great with

healing magic, but this was one of the simplest spells in that field and he had an excellent grasp on

it. The spell told him what he already knew, but didn’t want to accept.

Zorian was dead.

“No,” he whispered despondently. “No! Zorian you stupid, stupid, stupid- Why!? Why would you do

something so-”

‘Because this was deliberate. What don’t you understand? He chose to die so you could live.’

The thought bubbled up to his mind suddenly, unpleasant and uninvited. It hit him like a punch in the

face.

“H-He wouldn’t…” Zach mumbled to himself. “He’s too selfish… he said so himself! He has friends, a

family, a little sister that needs him, a whole bunch of girls that want to get in his pants. I…”

He took a deep breath and forcefully calmed himself. He… had to check something.

He got up to his feet and ran up to where Red Robe was also laying on the ground, motionless. The

man was also dead, unsurprisingly. Not only did Zorian’s last attack completely destroy his heart and

chest, the blue wave that accompanied the attack also did something. Ripped his soul out of his

body, maybe? His medical magic was too rudimentary to figure it out, but the man was definitely

dead.

He swallowed heavily and then got up again. He started to search for other people.

Everyone seemed to be unconscious, Zach soon realized. They were lying all over the place – on

the streets, in public buildings, in alleyways, everywhere.

It wasn’t that they got knocked out during a fight, either. His diagnostic spells confirmed most of

them were completely healthy, barring some minor scrapes and bruises that were normal for the

current conditions of the city. They seemed to have just suddenly dropped unconscious all of a

sudden.

He eventually found Alanic, Xvim, and… Zorian’s brother Daimen. Gods above, how was he going to

explain to the man that he just let his little brother…

He shook his head and carefully approached. They were still unconscious, just like everyone he

encountered so far. After a second of hesitation, he cast a memory reading spell and placed his

hand on Xvim’s head.

The spell encountered no resistance. He was sure that Xvim had placed a mind blank spell on him

during the battle, but there was no trace of it now. He immediately dove into the man’s memories,

searching for any information regarding the time loop.

His hand soon began to tremble. The man had no idea about any time loop. More than that,

however, he didn’t possess any memories of this entire month. Someone had quite literally memory

wiped his entire recollection of said time period.

He repeated his check on nearby Alanic and Daimen, with the same results. They were free of any

knowledge of the time loop… because they had no memory of anything that had transpired during

this whole month.

He breathed out heavily.

“Zorian, you scary bastard… how did you even do this?” he said out loud.

Wait. If he could do that to others… could he do it to him as well?

Was any of this real?

The moment the thought bubbled up to his mind, it refused to leave. He could feel something inside

his soul wake up and demand a check. He had to know. He had to know as badly as a starving man

needed food, a compulsion so strong it was essentially irresistible.

He started casting a plethora of diagnostic divinations on himself, his surroundings, and the three

unconscious people in front of him. He performed a multitude of little experiments he learned over

the years to detect when illusionists messed with his surroundings.

Nothing. His mind blank was still working. His mind was not being tampered with. The environment

was behaving as it should and the people in front of him were as complex as real people should be.

He started to wander the city, casting memory spells on random people he found lying in the streets.

By this time some people had started to wake up, but Zach simply walked past them, ignoring them

as he went about his task.

He wasn’t really searching for any specific information. He was reading people’s memories in order

to find out trivial things like their favorite meals, what their mother looked like, or what the last story

they’d heard was about. In other words, he was checking if they were real people.

A mind mage, no matter how good, couldn’t create a mind from scratch. Not a convincing one, in any

case. A fake man would be a paper thin disguise, capable of tricking only the most inexperienced of

mind mages. However, Zach had gotten to know Zorian long enough that he couldn’t discount

anything. He could totally accept that Zorian could produce a convincing fake mind. The guy was just

that scary.

Maybe even a pair of fake minds. Maybe a dozen.

By now he had read the memories of more than a hundred people, though. All of them felt real. All of

them were complex individuals with lots of little details about their lives and tangled histories that

Zach could easily lose himself in for weeks at a time if he really wanted to figure them out. He

refused to believe that anyone could create so many lives out of thin air. Even someone like Zorian.

He lost track of time. He wandered around the city, checking on people. Anyone that was even

slightly familiar with the time loop had lost their memories of the whole month. No exceptions. Even

the aranea beneath Cyoria were missing any memory of this month. An entire colony of skilled

telepaths, but Zorian had somehow managed to convince them to willingly delete their own

memories.

Eventually, he accepted the truth. It was real. It was all real. Jornak was dead. Silverlake too – she

was done in by her old, real world self, who lost her memories of the past month, but was otherwise

unharmed.

Nobody knew anything about the time loop except for him.

He left the city. He couldn’t look at it any longer. He found a small hill just outside the city walls that

he and Zorian used to sit on sometimes, discussing their plans or just wasting time, and watched the

fields around him in silence.

He had no idea how long he stood there. He thought someone approached him at one point and

asked him if he was alright, but he ignored them and they eventually went away. All he knew was

that at some point he realized that someone was shooting fireworks into the sky.

It was the night of the summer festival. The city may have just suffered a brutal invasion, but that

was no reason to halt the celebrations. Hell, if anything this just made the importance of a

celebration that much greater!

And Zach… felt happy. He felt disgusted with himself for it, but he really did. Panaxeth was still

sealed and the conditions of his contract had been fulfilled. He was going to live past this month.

He… had won.

He was Zach Noveda, the last surviving member of Noble House Noveda and the last surviving time

looper…

…and he had won.

He fell to his knees and began to cry. Somewhere deep inside his soul, he could feel the angel

contract harmlessly dissolve, finally fulfilled.

He was free, and all it cost him was the life of his best friend.

Chapter 105

I Win (II)

He was Jornak Dokochin, a humble lawyer from Cyoria, the true heir of House Denen, and the last

surviving time looper…

…and he had won.

The path had been long and difficult. He still remembered that fateful day he had realized Zach was

a time traveler. The boy had been making scene after scene around the city, making ‘nonsensical’

statements to the newspapers and everyone else who would listen, never once outright stating what

he was, but very much hinting at it. Very few people had taken him seriously. Jornak hadn’t either, in

all honesty – not until the boy had come to him one day and asked him to help him figure out some

legal documents he ‘found lying around the living room’.

The documents blew Jornak’s mind away. Not because the contents were so shocking, but because

of what they implied. The people they implicated in crimes were so influential and highly placed, and

the evidence so damning, that Jornak simply knew that Zach must have stolen them from the very

people mentioned in the documents.

Jornak knew exactly how hard that feat was. After the corrupt Eldemarian courts had taken the

inheritance of House Denen away from him, he had come to understand that truth and the letter of

the law were almost entirely inconsequential in the face of money, connections, and social status.

He became a covert member of the Cult of the World Dragon and rubbed shoulders with many

powerful people. He came to know the darker undercurrents of Eldemar society, and knew what it

would take to acquire this kind of dirt on someone.

No amount of money could buy something like this, so how could Zach have possibly acquired these

documents? Jornak had agonized over this question for days, dissecting every statement Zach had

made, no matter how minor or nonsensical, and eventually came up with a crazy idea. The craziest

idea, possibly. He confronted Zach with it, and… the boy just laughed and admitted to it easily.

Yes, he was a time traveler. In fact, he had lived through this month many, many times, and they

had talked before.

Jornak believed him. He wanted to believe him. His life had been rather dreary and frustrating for

several years by that point. His career wasn’t going anywhere, despite his attempts to build

connections and increase his social standing. He had no success in love. His family was long dead.

The inheritance of House Denen, his best chance at achieving greatness, was stolen from him. His

youth was all but spent, and he felt he wasn’t going anywhere. This looping time travel thing may

have been completely insane, but Jornak was willing to take a chance on it.

The two became fast friends. Zach explained that he had originally found Jornak because he’d

befriended Veyers in one of the restarts, and the boy had introduced him to his lawyer friend. Zach’s

story about his caretaker selling Noveda property for pocket change to his friends and then

siphoning most of the money into his pockets fascinated Jornak almost as much as the time travel

story itself.

He wasn’t that unique in his realization that Zach was a time traveler. Zach had been making a lot of

noise during that particular restart, handing out clues to various people he was fond of, and a

number of them had reached the same conclusion he had. Zach was also dating no less than two

women at the time – both of them aware of the other and fine with it – and he’d outright told them the

truth long before Jornak had met him. It was… a fascinating group. He’d made a lot of new friends

that month.

There was a looming shadow over the whole thing, however, and it grew colder and more obvious

with every passing day. Zach Noveda wasn’t a mage who invented time travel, merely a leaf caught

in the storm. The mechanics of the time loop were merciless, and they would soon strike.

As the end of the month approached, some people in the group got increasingly concerned. Jornak

was one of them. During one evening when they were alone, and Zach had a little too much to drink,

he admitted to Jornak that he would eventually stop interacting with him altogether. It had happened

repeatedly in the past: Zach would get to know someone, interact with them over and over again, get

emotionally attached to them, and then decide it was too painful to be around them in the future.

The admission shook Jornak to his core. He wasn’t sure why. He wouldn’t really remember anything

soon, so why did it matter that Zach would replace him with someone else in one of the future

restarts? It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. He grew increasingly desperate, constantly probing

Zach for any ideas about how he can keep existing after the month was over. He recruited the other

members of Zach’s group into his efforts, and eventually they managed to force an admission out of

him.

There was a way. A divine artifact, held by a lich, that could confer the status of a temporary looper

upon a person. It would only be for six restarts, and Zach explained again and again why he didn’t

want to do it, why it was a bad idea, and so forth. It didn’t matter – not to Jornak, and not to the other

people. Six months was better than nothing.

It was probably the two lovers that did most of the job of convincing Zach to play along with their

request, Jornak suspected. Still, he was the one who organized the whole effort and he was very

proud of it. The next six months were a great time, possibly the happiest in Jornak’s life. He did not

intend to betray Zach at that time, not at all – the boy was his best friend, and Jornak had every

intention of helping him out in any way he could.

But alas… six restarts had eventually passed. The second deadline started to approach. Tempers

ran high. People started asking Zach for a way to prolong their time looping status, horrified that they

were about to lose everything they had achieved during these past six months. Zach’s mood

continually worsened, both from him being heartbroken that the people he spent the past six months

with were about to become lost to him, and the fact they were constantly badgering him about a

solution that didn’t exist. That he couldn’t provide.

Jornak’s friendship with Zach also started to gradually deteriorate as the end approached. Jornak

was far more interested in politics of the state and in what was happening behind closed doors of

their nation’s elite. He had come to know much, and he grew more disgusted with them than he ever

had been. He talked to Zach often about these issues, but the boy was just a teenager at heart, and

his perspective was narrow and naïve. He simply wanted to get back at his caretaker, start

rebuilding his House, and have fun. He did not appreciate the knowledge Jornak had painstakingly

gathered, and found his methods to be immoral and disturbing. As the end of their temporary looper

status approached, they clashed more and more frequently, and Jornak made the mistake of telling

Zach exactly what he would do if he were in his place. The look Zach had given him when he

stopped talking… Jornak would always remember that…

Eventually Zach called for a group meeting. He swore again and again that he wasn’t hiding any

methods of prolonging their looping, and that there was nothing he could do. He promised them he

would make them all temporary loopers again as soon as he could.

He also privately promised Jornak he would supply his future looper with all the work he had done in

those six restarts, but Jornak didn’t believe him. The boy hadn’t even read the last two reports

Jornak gave him, much less memorized them. Even if he wanted to hand future Jornak the fruits of

his work, how would he do it? Not to mention that he probably didn’t even want to do it. He doubted

Zach would even make him a temporary looper in the future. He remembered Zach’s admission that

he eventually dropped people from his social circle after interacting with them for a few restarts. He

remembered the look Zach had given him not too long ago. And he decided he had to do something.

He had never planned to betray Zach. He’d wanted to work with him. To help him. When one really

thought about it, Zach was the one who betrayed him.

Jornak himself was not a powerful man. His magical aptitude was entirely average, and not even the

time loop could change that. But some of the people in the looper group were magically powerful,

and their skills had only gotten better due to Zach’s willingness to help them grow. Getting them to

side with him was tricky, but not too difficult. Desperation made people do previously unthinkable

things. Contacting Quatach-Ichl and arranging a meeting with him without being immediately killed

had been hard, but not nearly as hard as he had feared it would be. From that point on, everything

kind of slid into place.

In the end, that path had led him here: locked in a deadly battle against his one-time best friend and

fellow time travelling companion – Zach.

He had to admit, he had been pretty worried for a while. The ability he’d gotten from Panaxeth was

not nearly as effective as he thought it would be. Weren’t primordials supposed to be on the level of

gods? He expected more out of primordial magic, to be honest. That prison should have taken some

kind of advanced, specialized magic to get out of, but Zach had an appropriate spell for breaking it

already in his arsenal.

Then, when they were pulled back into Cyoria proper, it was just in time to see Zorian banish

Quatach-Ichl back to his phylactery with the help of a… flower? He dimly recognized it as a

soulseizer chrysanthemum. What an obscure magical creature. In any case, he was of two minds

about this. On one hand, he needed the ancient lich to win this. On the other hand, it was satisfying

to see the black-hearted bastard finally get knocked down a peg or two. And besides, he still had the

dragon m-

Oganj left. He took the crown and the orb, and he just left! Unbelievable. Jornak had given him so

much for his assistance as forward payment – materials, maps, records of draconic magic that

humans had taken from other dragon mages, everything – but Oganj still chose to switch sides in

exchange for two thrice-damned divine artifacts.

A familiar bitterness welled up from the back of his mind. Everyone always betrayed him. He was so

fed up with everything.

He still didn’t think the situation was hopeless. He started the invasion a day before the actual

deadline for releasing Panaxeth, so he had some time for another attempt. He would activate all of

his contingencies and plunge the country into chaos. He would activate all of the remaining wraith

bombs in other cities – he refused to believe his enemies had enough countermeasures to disable

them all, or that they had even managed to track down every single one of them. He would

assassinate people and mind control critical individuals into starting hostilities with every nearby

country. He would sic the police and Eldemar’s military on them, their allies, friends, and family. He

would descend straight into the Hole and lure the monsters lurking in the deepest layer of the

dungeon back to the surface to wreak havoc on it until the city was nothing but ruins…

It was suboptimal. He wanted to rule this country, and make it better, not bring it to its knees.

However, he had to be alive in order to improve things, and his opponents had forced his hand. If

this was the only path they had left for him, he would not hesitate. He was-

Suddenly, that other looper, Zorian Kazinski, teleported next to them and immediately rushed

towards them.

Zorian… Jornak had so many regrets in regards to the boy. He shouldn’t have panicked and fled the

time loop when he realized there were other time loopers aside from him and Zach, but it made

perfect sense at the time. The information he had gotten from the aranea said there was a small

legion of them, which… was entirely possible. If Zach wanted to and had the crown, he could have

made the entire city into temporary loopers. What if Panaxeth decided some of them would make for

a better champion than him? And if Zach was creating so many loopers, he probably knew about the

Sovereign Gate and how to leave the time loop. He couldn’t play around and risk things. The safest

thing to do was to leave as soon as possible.

As it turned out, there was just one additional looper, and he hadn’t gotten in through Zach’s actions.

He got in through some weird mistake in the time loop system. Jornak couldn’t even begin to

describe how jealous he was of the boy when he heard that. He had to go through so much trouble

to keep existing, and then this boy got all of that and more through a simple stroke of luck? The

world was sometimes so unfair.

But no matter, this was perfect. He didn’t know what had possessed the boy to get this close to him

all of a sudden, but he wasn’t going to waste a golden opportunity like this. He drew the imperial

dagger out of his belt with a smooth, practiced motion, its weight and shape familiar and comforting

in his hand. The dagger had long been his oldest and most reliable companion, and if he could, he

always recovered it from the royal vaults, where it was just uselessly gathering dust. He had spent

many years tinkering with it and learning everything it could do.

The dagger lit up with a faint purple glow as he thrust it towards Zorian. The imperial dagger was

mostly known for its ability to hurt spirits easily, but it had several alternate modes, and this was one

of them. The third looper arrogantly refused to dodge his strike, instead placing his defense device in

front of him to ward off the blow. Jornak would be first to admit that the cube was an incredible

achievement that left him in awe of Zorian’s ingenuity and skill, but it was ultimately just a mortal

item. The dagger pierced through the complex, multi-layer shield projected by the cube like it didn’t

exist and then stabbed right through the alchemically-reinforced metal like it was paper.

To his credit, this wasn’t enough to take the boy down. Zorian reacted quickly, telekinetically moving

his body out of the way of the knife while simultaneously hurling the ruined cube into the sky. Having

suffered catastrophic damage, the cube exploded above their heads moments later, showering the

area with serrated metal fragments and exotic magical energies.

Jornak locked eyes with Zorian, unsurprised by the boy’s quick reactions. Though he was standing

here partially due to luck, Zorian Kazinski was someone that had repeatedly shown himself to be a

shrewd and decisive person. When Jornak was about to capture and interrogate him back in the

time loop, he killed himself without hesitation to deny him useful information. What’s more, the action

was clearly a pre-planned contingency and he had enough presence of mind as he ran to make sure

Jornak would be unable to recover his body. He did not expect him to die so easily.

Still, with his best defensive tool destroyed, and with him momentarily unbalanced, Jornak decided

to bet it all on one last push. This was extremely dangerous and may very well end with him killed,

but it wasn’t the first time he risked his life for a chance to live, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

He wrapped his hand around a small black bottle hanging from his neck and squeezed, shattering it

with ease with his supernatural strength.

Hundreds of black shapes suddenly slipped from between his fingers, expanding in size as they

filled the skies above them. Vaguely humanoid, the entities looked like legless incorporeal humans in

tattered pitch black cloaks.

Wraiths. The whole area immediately began to feel uncomfortably chilly as the mere presence of so

many of them began to leech minute amounts of life force from the three combatants, and resonant

whispers filled the air as wraiths began to babble in that usual incomprehensible nonsense they

constantly spouted.

Wraiths were mysterious creatures, with unclear origins and very few methods of effectively fighting

them. In many ways, they almost resembled spirits, but they were usually classified as undead due

to their ability to convert human souls into more of themselves. They were difficult to control. Jornak

did not actually have any ability to direct the wraith horde he had just released from his miniature

wraith bomb, and he had no doubt the wraiths would see him as just as big of a target as the other

two people present. However, Jornak was betting he would have a definite advantage anyway,

because he had something he didn’t think either of the other two had: sophisticated, well-honed soul

magic skills.

Soul magic was a sinister branch of magic, requiring a lot of cruel and unpleasant experimentation

and willingness to deal and negotiate with some very loathsome people. Jornak had long accepted

this, and he did not let it bother him. He had tortured entire villages of people, over and over again,

to see how different soul magic methods affected the same soul over various restarts. He sold

kidnapped babies and small orphans to some of the more unscrupulous witches that were willing to

teach him their skills in exchange for ‘suitable material’. He spoke with demon summoners,

participating in their disgusting rituals in order to prove his ‘sincerity’. His magical talents may be

average, but he was confident that there were few people who could boast about having a similar

level of skill when it came to soul magic. Zach certainly wasn’t one of them, and Silverlake was

adamant that Zorian wasn’t that much better.

His opponents knew it too. When they saw the wraiths flood the area, the two of them tried to retreat

and regroup elsewhere, but how could Jornak allow that? He stopped them. He foiled their

teleportation, he wrenched them back when they tried to fly away, and when the two attacked him

together and he was forced to choose between being wounded and letting them flee, he chose to get

wounded. His regeneration ability was not nearly as potent as that of Silverlake, but his body was far

more resilient than that of a regular person, and healed quickly. So long as he didn’t black out and

could cast magic, it was fine. He would bear it. He would outlast them, outlast everyone, and win.

He had to win. All of the sacrifices, all the things he’d done… it couldn’t have been all in vain. He

was close, so very close to the end…

In the end, he triumphed. His soul defenses were honed to perfection, yet even he strained to deal

with so many wraiths relentlessly assaulting him. Zach and Zorian? They couldn’t compare. Maybe if

they hadn’t expended so many of their resources before they decided to tackle him, they could have

got themselves out of this situation, but alas. For all their power and skill, in the end, all it took was

one mistake for them to fall and be devoured by wraiths. Jornak quietly thanked Zorian for deciding

to join the battle when he had – if Jornak had been unable to catch both of his enemies at once in

his wraith trap, this wouldn’t have worked.

The moment the two loopers fell, Jornak fled the site and waited for the wraiths to scatter before

returning to check up on them. Always check the bodies to make sure your enemies were really

dead, after all. This was especially true when dealing with enemies on the level of Zach and Zorian.

A minute later, he breathed a sigh of release. They were really dead. It was over.

He started to laugh. Yes. Yes! He… he knew he could do it!

Now was not the time for gloating, however. That would come later. For now, he started searching

the city for his ‘partner’, Silverlake.

He eventually found her not far from where he fought Zach and Zorian. Or what was left of her,

anyway. She was really just an empty bag of skin now. After cautiously kneeling down and

inspecting the skin, he found two large puncture wounds in her chest and no other notable damage.

Something, probably some kind of magical creature, had liquefied her insides and slurped it all out,

leaving this preserved husk behind.

Jornak frowned. Silverlake was probably the weakest one from among the four of them that had

managed to escape from the time loop, but she shouldn’t have been this easy to kill. In fact, despite

being the weakest, Jornak suspected she was the hardest of them to kill, both because her

primordial abilities were all defensive in nature and because she herself was a cowardly wretch that

would no doubt flee at the first hint of actual danger. The creature that had killed her… some kind of

spider, maybe? In any case, it had to be very powerful. On the level of a dragon, really. How did a

creature like that get here, and where was it now? And why hadn’t Silverlake simply retreated if she

had encountered something like that? Magical creatures generally had little ability to stop high-level

mages from fleeing if outmatched, unless they were sapient spellcasters in their own right.

Concerning.

Still. Maybe it was better this way. Jornak hadn’t actually liked Silverlake that much. She had brought

him some very useful knowledge, and for that, he would always be grateful to her, but she was also

clearly playing her own game and knew too much about Jornak’s true nature for him to be

comfortable with it. This way there was one less person potentially messing up his plans.

With Silverlake dead, it fell to him to fulfill their bargain with Panaxeth and set him loose upon the

world. He threw himself into the task without hesitation, rallying the invader forces under his banner

and gathering the surviving cultists that had scattered around the city after their defeat near the

Hole. While most of the cultists had perished, their leaders and high-level members were powerful

and resourceful enough to survive for the most part, and they were the most important part anyway.

Jornak had them set up the ritual while the Ibasan army protected them, and used his own primordial

essence in place of the shifter children that the defenders had managed to rescue and evacuate out

of the city. He had thought about trying to recover them, but eventually decided that would take too

long. Eldemar was already mobilizing their whole army to crush this invasion, and he had no time to

lose. Using his own primordial essence was going to weaken him for a long time, and disable most

of his primordial magic, but he would rather pay this price than risk dying at the end of the month

because he had wasted too much time.

Imagine if that happened – he, the ultimate victor of the time loop war, ended up dying because he

had failed to release Panaxeth before the Eldemar army rolled into the city and killed all his

underlings. He would die wallowing in shame and embarrassment! No, he would pay the price with

his own flesh and blood and do things properly. No gains without sacrifice.

The ritual went off without issue. Space cracked, the prison broke, and then Panaxeth burst into

existence above the city, his fleshy limbs reaching out of his prison and burying themselves into the

roads and buildings. Then, he slowly started to drag his entire bulk out of the pocket dimension that

had contained him all these millennia…

Jornak immediately fled. He may have been Panaxeth’s champion, but he did not trust the primordial

at all. His part of the contract was finished, in any case. Funny, he thought he would be able to feel it

when the restriction lifted, but there was nothing. The death pact Panaxeth placed on him simply

disappeared from his perception – one moment it was there, the next it was gone. Well… it was

primordial magic, after all. Who knows how that worked. He was finally free, that was all that

mattered.

The cultists, arrogant idiots that they were, stayed behind. Jornak knew that they had some kind of

crazy plan that involved binding the primordial to their will and becoming gods in the process, but it

was lunacy. They were like ants trying to enslave a tiger. Even weakened, Panaxeth was not

something they could handle. Even a fragment of him could probably annihilate them.

The primordial let loose a deep, resonant rumble that made the whole city visibly vibrate. Some of

the weaker buildings, weakened by the fires and the fighting, immediately collapsed from it. Then the

rampage began. Ibasan forces were retreating now as fast as they could, but Jornak knew most of

them would never make it.

He took one last look at the unraveling city and then teleported away. He wanted to be as far as

possible from the area.

- break -

Eventually, Jornak made his way to Iasku Mansion. The place was thoroughly trashed, its wards

broken and most of the souls that powered it set free when their prison cracked and crumbled, but

the structure itself was still standing when the angel was done venting its ire on it. Probably because

Sudomir placed and set smaller, but far stronger defensive wards around the ward core that housed

his wife’s soul, and the angel didn’t want to spend time breaking it down when there were more

important battles happening elsewhere.

The angel then dropped the barrier that had kept Iasku Mansion contained, and Sudomir enacted

another long-distance teleport ritual to translocate the mansion out of the city, and then all the way to

Ulquaan Ibasa. This was something that Sudomir had long since arranged with Quatach-Ichl in case

things went wrong with their plan.

Sitting in one of the few intact rooms inside the mansion, Jornak had been feeling quite pleased with

himself, basking in the glow of his own success, when another person entered the room.

Quatach-Ichl. The lich was in his human guise now (though Quatach-Ichl insisted this form was just

as true as his ‘battle form’), and he looked as relaxed and confident as ever. Jornak wanted to make

some snide comments about him getting taken out by a flower, but he refrained. More than Zach,

Zorian, or anyone else, the ancient lich was the one that really terrified Jornak. He didn’t think even

his fellow loopers really understood the force they were dealing with when they tangled with him.

Without Quatach-Ichl, Jornak would never have been able to make himself a permanent looper. Oh

sure, Panaxeth was the one who supplied him with a method of transforming his temporary marker

into a permanent one, but never in a million years would Jornak have been able to actually use the

method himself. No, he had to beg Quatach-Ichl for assistance to help him perform the task. And the

price for the lich’s help… even now Jornak couldn’t help but feel uneasy about it.

He had heard from Silverlake that the other looper already suspected that Quatach-Ichl had been

integral in turning his temporary marker into a permanent one, but they couldn’t figure out why the

lich hadn’t also made himself into a looper as well, then. The answer was simple: the method

required one to make a deal with Panaxeth in order to work, and the lich wasn’t willing to make a

death pact with a primordial under any circumstances. However, that didn’t mean he was willing to

help Jornak without any assurances. He forced Jornak to accept something called a ’soul seed’ – a

small fragment of Quatach-Ichl’s soul, somehow processed to prevent degradation and imbued with

some measure of self-awareness and memory – and bound said soul fragment to Jornak’s soul, with

instructions to return to the original Quatach-Ichl when Jornak successfully came back to the real

world.

The soul fragment had been with Jornak for the entire duration of his stay in the time loop, and even

Jornak wasn’t sure what it was up to during that time. Was it merely patiently waiting to return to its

master, containing only the memories of that one Quatach-Ichl Jornak made the deal with? Or was it

watching and learning the whole time, riding him like a spying parasite? He didn’t know. All he knew

was that once he left the time loop and was incarnated in the real world, the soul fragment

immediately left him and rejoined Quatach-Ichl.

Jornak had no need to convince the lich he was a time traveler. Quatach-Ichl already knew, and was

waiting for him when Jornak came knocking.

He had no idea how much the ancient lich knew about what happened in the time loop, and it scared

him.

“So,” Quatach-Ichl said, sitting down in one of the nearby chairs. “I think we can safely describe this

operation as a success, yes?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Jornak agreed. “Though, if I may make an observation… the damage made by the

primordial seemed to be somewhat underwhelming. Cyoria will be no more after today, that is true,

but the country as a whole will survive. Aren’t you worried they will launch a punitive expedition

against your homeland for this? Your involvement in this will be impossible to hide.”

“Oh no, I fully expect them to retaliate in some manner,” Quatach-Ichl said. “I welcome it. Our

leaders have been very foolish lately, trying to set up trade treaties with the mainland and other such

nonsense. A nice war or two will be good for us.”

Jornak nodded. This kind of attitude meshed pretty well with the lich’s attitude in their past

conversations.

“What about you?” the lich asked. “Aren’t you worried?”

“Why would I be?” Jornak asked curiously. “I won.”

“It was a close thing,” Quatach-Ichl remarked.

“A win is a win,” Jornak insisted. He glared slightly at the lich. “Besides, it wouldn’t have been that

close if you hadn’t stupidly got yourself killed. And by a flower, no less.”

“Soulseizers are curious creatures,” Quatach-Ichl said lightly, clearly not bothered by the swipe. Or

at least not giving any visible indication that he was. The ancient lich’s poker face was too good. “I’ll

have to look into them when I find the time. Alas, I suspect the next few years are going to be very

busy for me indeed.”

Well, he was certainly right about that. For one thing, Jornak fully intended to start executing his

plans the moment he left from here. He and the lich had completely incompatible plans for the future,

and were pretty much guaranteed to start sabotaging each other’s efforts soon.

Really, Jornak wouldn’t be surprised if Quatach-Ichl tried to kill him here today. Unfortunately for

him, Jornak was well aware of this possibility and had taken every possible precaution before

coming here. He won’t die here. He won’t die ever.

He was only just starting, really.

“What would you have done if the invasion failed?” Quatach-Ichl asked, sounding genuinely curious.

A multitude of contingencies floated in Jornak’s mind in response to the lich’s question – explosive

traps in numerous cities and buildings meant to cause mass casualties, assassination contracts that

would be executed unless he called them off, documents unmasking Zach and Zorian just waiting to

be discovered by the authorities… he had many ways to make his enemies regret their victory if he

ever lost. Still he told none of them to Quatach-Ichl. Although he planned to dismantle all of them

now, there was no reason to reveal his methods and reasoning to someone who would soon

become his bitter enemy.

He quickly checked his mental defenses and found that his mind blank was still on and in perfect

condition. Good. For a moment he was afraid Quatach-Ichl was trying to pick up answers straight

from his surface thoughts.

Still, he felt an urge to brag a little. He started to ramble about one of his less important

contingencies – a bundle of documents implicating Zorian in the events of the invasion, deliberately

placed in one of the cabinets of the police building in Korsa. The cabinet was rarely used, but its

owner was very dutiful and meticulous. It would take weeks for the documents to be discovered, and

by that time Zach and Zorian will have likely stopped being on high alert for such things and should

hopefully be caught completely by surprise. Then there was that letter he sent straight to the royal

residence. It should be arriving-

He suddenly stopped talking. Why… why was he telling the lich this? Didn’t he just conclude they

were going to become enemies soon and that it would be best to stay quiet? And the expression on

Quatach-Ichl’s face… he was leaning forward and listening with bated breath, like this was the most

interesting thing ever. What…?

“Who… who are you!?” Jornak suddenly snapped, jumping from his chair and going on full combat

alert. He had spent enough time around the lich to learn some of his mannerisms and this didn’t look

like him. In fact, when he really thought about it, his entire demeanor this whole time was slightly off.

“You’re not Quatach-Ichl?”

“Why do you say that?” the imposter asked, feigning calm curiosity.

Jornak fired a blistering beam of red light at the imposter, who didn’t even try to dodge.

The beam went straight through his forehead without any resistance.

The man wearing Quatach-Ichl’s face sighed.

“So impersonating the lich is a lost cause,” he lamented to himself. “No matter how many times I try,

I just can’t seem to portray him convincingly. It’s a shame, since he’s the one you’re most likely to

really talk with about all the details. Maybe I should try Silverlake?”

W-What?

Wait…

No.

No!

“You can’t be! You can’t be him!” Jornak protested, his voice getting more and more panicked. “I

killed you! I know I did! Your soul got devoured by wraiths! I… I have a mind blank on, that spell is

total protection against-”

He checked his mind. He checked it again, and then a third time. Always the same result. His mind

blank was still one. His mind was protected.

Except it wasn’t.

‘None of this is real…’ Jornak realized.

“Well then,” the imposter in the guise of Quatach-Ichl said. “Let’s try this again, shall we?”

Jornak’s heart went cold. How many times had he done this? How many times had he lived through

this day, enjoying his triumph, making grand plans about what would come next, only to forget all

about it again and again? All the while some sinister force keeps talking to him, pumping him for

information, varying their approach in this or that way, to get what they wanted out of him.

His mind couldn’t help but harken back to his time in the time loop, back when he was just a humble

lawyer wishing there was more to his life. Back to when he realized his life was literally an endless

loop meant to exploit him. It was just like that now, but worse. Infinitely worse.

His vision began to darken. He wanted to do something, wanted to send a signal to his various

contingencies in one final act of spite, but his mind was fading, fading, fading… He forgot Zorian’s

words, forgot what led him to this place, forgot any of this ever happened. He found himself back in

Cyoria, surrounded by corpses of Zach and Zorian, knowing only one thing:

He was Jornak Dokochin, a humble lawyer from Cyoria, the true heir of House Denen, and the last

surviving time looper…

…and he had won.

Again, and again, and again.

Chapter 106

I Win (III)

He was Zorian Kazinski, the third son of a minor merchant family from Cirin, accidental time traveler,

and quite possibly the most powerful human mind mage in all of Altazia…

…and he had won.

It was not an easy task to arrange all of this. Sure, he could have beaten Jornak and Silverlake,

stopped the ritual, and left it at that… but that would be a very bittersweet outcome. Zach would

have died at the end of the month and Zorian would have spent the rest of his future running away

from Eldemarian assassins and whatnot.

Zorian did not spend all those years in the time loop just to settle for a… suboptimal outcome.

The first task, of course, was figuring out how to get past the mind blank spell. Even before he had

known about Zach’s angelic contract, he’d known the boy was hiding something of critical

importance that he would have to wrench out of his head. Thus, he worked with Xvim, aranea, and

many others to find the solution. A way to beat the ultimate mental defense – a spell that had been

providing total protection against mind magic, no exceptions, for literal centuries now.

A lot of people Zorian had worked with thought it was a fool’s task to begin with. What did Zorian

have that so many other mind mages that tried to invent a workaround hadn’t? But Zorian didn’t

embark upon this idea blindly. He already had an idea before he threw himself into the project.

The soulseizer chrysanthemum was a very rare and obscure magical creature. It was so dangerous

and frightening to people that they had long since eradicated it in more civilized areas, not even

bothering to study it properly before doing so. Who was brave enough to research a flower that

would eat your soul if you made a mistake in restraining it? Not many people. It didn’t help that the

plant was a very valuable component for many potions, meaning it was worth more dead than alive

to begin with.

In modern times, of course, some mage or organization would have probably become interested in

the soulseizer and organized a hunt so its abilities could be studied… except that the plant only lived

in monster infested wilderness these days, was surprisingly good at hiding, and smart enough to

pick its fights carefully. Plus, its abilities were not well known, and old descriptions found in ancient

tomes did not do the creature justice. They made the chrysanthemum look like a simple plant-

shaped soul eater. It just wasn’t that impressive sounding.

Zorian had experienced the flower’s attack first-hand, however. Zach hadn’t thought much about

their experience, seeing it only as an embarrassing instance where they had nearly been beaten by

a flower, and soon forgot about it. But Zorian had never forgotten. The way the plant’s initial stunning

attack had simply bypassed all of their defenses left a deep impression on him.

If the chrysanthemum could bypass their defenses by targeting their body, mind, and soul

simultaneously… could the same method be used to target someone’s mind even when it was

protected by the mind blank?

Mind blank protected the mind by separating it from what the aranea called ‘the Great Web’. The

mind closed in on itself, rejecting all contact. But it was still connected to the brain, and to the soul. It

should be possible to target the mind by going through those two, somehow. This wasn’t a new idea,

by any means, but most people who tried to make such a method work before hadn’t had the

soulseizer chrysanthemum on hand to provide a working example of how such a thing would work in

practice.

Zorian did. And he had a whole host of experts in both soul magic and mind magic to help him figure

it out.

The process of studying the chrysanthemum’s abilities had some unintended benefits. He probably

would not have found a way to negate the wraith bombs in a reasonable amount of time if he hadn’t

spent so much time studying the flower and its abilities, and he wouldn’t have been able to make the

weapon that Mrva had used to disable Quatach-Ichl for a few moments. These were all just side

benefits, however, paling in importance to the real end goal of the research: the manifold resonance

spell.

The spell was not ideal by any means. First of all, the magic Zorian and his team designed could

only be used through touch. Skin-to-skin contact was required to successfully cast the spell. It was

also incredibly complicated and hard to control. Three whole minds were needed to execute the

spell. Not an impossible requirement for someone who could make simulacrums like Zorian could,

but still an issue. Finally, targets eventually acquired a resistance to it. Experiments showed that

targeting the same person repeatedly with the spell made them instinctively resist it after only a

handful of attempts. In the case of people with highly trained defenses like Xvim and Alanic, that

meant they became resistant after only two or three attempts.

But it worked. It was complicated and inconvenient, but it did the impossible and that was all that

mattered. With the spell to bypass mind blank in his arsenal, victory – actual victory – was finally

possible.

In the end, that path had led him here: locked in a deadly battle against his fellow time travelers –

Zach and Jornak.

When Zorian teleported next to the two combatants and lunged at them, hands glowing, he knew

neither would take it lying down. Zach looked shocked at his sudden betrayal, but he was an

experienced fighter and reacted immediately, firing a pair of blindingly bright white rays that nearly

took Zorian’s head off. Only his defense cube saved him, by warping space around him slightly to

make the beams miss. As for Jornak, he drew the imperial dagger out of his belt with a smooth,

practiced motion and thrust it straight at Zorian’s face.

Zorian didn’t know much about the imperial dagger. Its main ability out of the time loop was

supposed to be its ability to hurt spirits, but… why take that chance? He doubted Jornak would try to

use it on him if it wasn’t uniquely useful in this situation. He jumped back a little, evading the stab at

the cost of losing some momentum and giving up some of his advantage of surprise.

“Zorian, what-” Zach started saying, outrage evident in his voice.

He never got to finish it. A marble Zorian ‘accidentally’ dropped out of his pocket before he jumped

back suddenly activated and instantly sucked in all the air around them, creating a sizeable area of

total vacuum between them.

The surrounding air quickly rushed in to fill the void, forcefully dragging all three of them into the

center of the area. Jornak and Zach were unharmed, but caught off guard. But Zorian was ready.

The moment they collided with each other he clamped down on Zach and Jornak’s hands and cast

the spell.

A faint blue wave quickly rippled through them, expanding from the point of contact to envelop their

whole bodies. They still had their mind blank spells on, but it didn’t matter. Their bodies went limp,

insensate to the world around them.

A moment later, they were plunged into a constructed dream world over which Zorian had total

control.

It was an incredible achievement, creating this thing, and this wasn’t just Zorian praising himself. The

aranea were also in awe of the scale of what he created. That said, he wasn’t doing this alone. Aside

from him and his simulacrums, many, many aranea were helping him control the illusionary world.

On top of that, he wasn’t really conjuring people’s surroundings out of nothing. He was accessing

eyes of people around the city and his iron beaks in the sky to give Zach and Jornak as convincing

of an experience as he possibly could.

He had to mess with their memories slightly. Mostly to make it look like they won in a convincing

manner – a process that took some trial and error, since Zorian didn’t have a perfect understanding

of their capabilities and habits. Thankfully, any mistake could be covered up by simply wiping away

their short-term memories and letting them relive the battle again and again until he got it right. He

also had to adjust Zach’s perception of what happened to Quatach-Ichl, since his contract couldn’t

be fulfilled unless the lich was seemingly dead. He made it look like his chrysanthemum weapon

actually managed to suck out Quatach-Ichl soul and kill him for good, which Zach thankfully

accepted as actually possible. Zorian took it as a compliment that Zach had that much faith in his

artifice.

Then there was the matter of Zach going around reading people’s minds. Zorian had known that

Zach would try that. After all, how else was he going to confirm that people did not know anything

about the time loop? Unfortunately, the boy was right that Zorian couldn’t really create convincing

fake minds. Even the dumbest, most boring person in existence had a mind more complex and

intricate than anything Zorian could conjure purely from his own imagination. So he didn’t even try.

Through his network of sigils around the city, Zorian was potentially connected to every person who

was still alive there. He could act as a mental bridge, allowing Zach to connect to any person in the

city through him. The minds he was reading were very much real.

Sadly, that also meant that when Zach checked people’s minds and saw they didn’t remember

anything that had happened during this past month, this was in no way faked. They really didn’t

remember anything. Zorian was forced to strip them of their mind blanks through dispelling, and wipe

away their memories of the month. He had thought about being more selective about it, but he

wanted things to be absolutely convincing to whatever evaluation mechanics Zach’s angel contract

employed.

He had gifted people like Xvim, Alanic, and Daimen memory crystals containing their deleted

memories for later perusal, but he knew that wasn’t nearly the same as having their real memories.

They weren’t trained psychics like he was, so digesting their memories from such a source would be

a struggle.

As for the aranea, deleting their memories of the whole month was kind of tricky, since they were

helping Zorian run this whole illusion, and he needed their help right now. Obviously, them not

having any memories of all this would be a bit of a problem. Thus, only the aranea that Zach actually

deigned to talk to deleted their memories, and Zach was never overly fond of the giant spiders.

Thus, the damage to the integrity of the illusion was minimal in the end. Even better, Zorian didn’t

have to provide the aranea with anything to make them recover after this. They had their own well-

developed system of storing their memories and had lots of practice of integrating stored memories

into their minds later, so it shouldn’t be a big chore for them to recover quickly.

Zorian was never as thankful for Zach’s disinterest in learning about aranean society as he was at

this moment. If Zach had known anything about them, he would have known that the only reliable

way to make sure they forgot something was to murder them all. Which, admittedly, wouldn’t have

been that hard to fake, but still. Zorian suspected the aranea would have forever borne a grudge

against the boy if they had all collectively been butchered by the guy they were trying to save, even if

it was understandable in their current circumstances, and done entirely in pretend fashion.

As for Jornak, the main reason he was trapped in his own private illusion was because Zorian

wanted to find all the dead-man switches the guy had scattered all over the place. He knew Jornak

would make them suffer from beyond the grave if they just let him die. He needed to find out what he

had in store for them and how to disarm his traps and contingencies.

He tried to simply get their fellow time traveler to simply talk about his plans. It was a good thing he

did. He had done a basic search of his memories, of course, but searching someone’s memories for

information depended on knowing what to look for, and Zorian knew that Jornak was a lot more

devious and experienced in this kind of cloak-and-dagger bullshit than he was. It only took a few

conversations with Jornak, in various guises, to understand that he would have missed many, many

things if he simply tried lifting things out of his mind. However, even this wasn’t enough. Jornak had

no real friends. His closest emotional attachment was to the damn imperial dagger, of all things.

Thus, he was understandably cagey around other people, even when Zorian prodded him with

subtle suggestions and emotional manipulation to make him more talkative. Eventually Zorian

resorted to messing with Jornak’s perception of time, making him believe days or weeks had passed

in order to learn what he would have done, and what he expected to happen.

Meanwhile, the invasion of the city was being beaten back all over the city. All of the invasion

leaders except the upper echelons of the Cult of the World Dragon were gone now, and they were

unable to rally the disparate forces around their leadership. Eventually the higher echelons of the

Ibasan forces found out that Quatach-Ichl was no longer present on the battlefield, and sounded a

retreat. Iasku Mansion was mostly demolished, but Sudomir had somehow managed to survive the

angel’s wrath by protecting the core of the mansion through particularly powerful wards. The

surviving Ibasans hurriedly gathered around the ruin, after which Sudomir translocated it out of the

city.

Annoyingly, Zorian had no option but to let it go. He was too busy to chase after them, his most

powerful allies were incapacitated, and the other city defenders couldn’t get through the gathered

Ibasan forces fast enough. He would later find out that Sudomir translocated his mansion two more

times after that, eventually landing on Ulquaan Ibasa, where he was granted refuge by the natives.

Great. If Eldemar had any doubts as to who to blame for the attack, they were unambiguously sure

now. Not that Quatach-Ichl, the instigator of the attack, cared about that. If Zorian had learned

anything from Jornak’s mind, it was that Quatach-Ichl was likely quite happy with this outcome.

Kirielle and Kana were alive and well, despite the attack on them. Zorian breathed a big sigh of relief

when he found that out. Sadly, Kosjenka joined Mrva in the hall of heroic golems by sacrificing

herself to save his little sister. An event that caused many tears on Kirielle’s part and prompted

Zorian to consider if he should perhaps delete her memories of the whole incident and quietly

replace Kosjenka’s remains with an unharmed copy…

…but no, that was a bad idea. He shouldn’t be that casual with memory wipes. And besides, Kirielle

didn’t know anything about golem theory, so she shouldn’t see anything wrong with Zorian ‘fixing’

Kosjenka into pristine condition.

Overall, things had turned out great. He had to give away the imperial orb to get rid of Oganj,

Quatach-Ichl and Sudomir were still alive and would probably make moves against them in the

future, and there was a high chance of another continental war brewing in the near future, but it

could have been worse. His friends and family were all alive, Zach was alive, and he was alive. The

only thing that kind of worried him was that he found Silverlake’s empty skin back where he left her

fighting with her original self. It was clear that the spider not just killed her, but ate her as well.

Which was strange. Grey hunters primarily ate powerful magical creatures. To his knowledge, they

thought humans tasted vile. The flesh wasn’t magical enough for their tastes. Why was Silverlake

eaten, then? Was it because of all the primordial essence Silverlake’s body contained?

There was no trace of the grey hunter anywhere in the city, and Zorian had pretty much total

coverage of everything on the surface at the moment. He had a sinking feeling the spider had fled

into the local underground.

Which meant he had just let an immensely powerful magical predator – one that had recently gorged

upon a great amount of primordial essence, no less – escape into the one place where there was

absolutely no hope of tracking it down.

He sighed. There was no use in worrying about this now. The deadline had come and passed.

Zach’s contract with the angels had harmlessly dissolved, and Jornak’s death pact claimed his life in

a gruesome fashion, his own flesh turning against itself like a country in the throes of a civil war.

Observing with his more magical senses, Zorian noticed that even the man’s mind and soul were

seemingly tearing themselves apart. After a few seconds of disgusting writhing and convulsing,

Jornak simply collapsed in a pile of unsightly goo.

Zorian opened his eyes, letting the spell finally collapse. He breathed a sigh of relief. He was beyond

exhausted. He and his simulacrums had maintained a… fake illusionary world… two of them,

actually… and had done that for more than a day, without rest or sleep.

He was no longer alone, however. He had moved to a secluded, secure space with Zach and Jornak

in tow, but it wasn’t really secret to Daimen, Xvim, and Alanic. All three were currently watching him

with grave, vaguely unfriendly expressions. Xvim was sitting on a nearby chair, a small book in his

hand. Alanic was standing in the center of the room, his hands folded over his chest. And Daimen

was leaning against the nearby doorway, blocking the exit and juggling the imperial dagger that

Zorian had removed from Jornak’s possessions.

All three were also clutching memory crystals in one of their hands. Zorian doubted they had

absorbed more than a small fraction of the memories stored in them, but they probably knew enough

to understand the general situation.

“We need to talk,” Alanic said blandly.

Rather than answering, Zorian ripped out a paper from a nearby notebook and started furiously

writing on it while explaining the situation to all three of them. A whole bunch of Jornak’s

contingencies were about to activate relatively soon, and they had to be dealt with as soon as

possible. His rushed scribblings were meant to be a reminder if they forgot some of the details he

was telling them.

The three people in front of him seemed to be part annoyed and part curious about his rushed

explanation, but they were polite enough to stay silent and listen while he was talking. It didn’t take

long, anyway – only a handful of Jornak’s plans were so very time critical. His list of instructions

done, Zorian stumbled to his feet, his limbs not working properly due to the long period of disuse,

and thrust the written list straight into Alanic’s confused hands before falling to the floor,

unconscious.

He was Zorian Kazinski, third son of a minor merchant family from Cirin, accidental time traveler,

and quite possibly the most powerful human mind mage in all of Altazia…

…and he had won.

And now it was time to finally get some rest.

Epilogue

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body

convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace

of drowsiness in his mind.

“Good morning, brother!” an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. “Morning,

morning, MORNING!!!”

Panic. Zorian’s awakened mind felt nothing but pure, all-consuming terror. After all of his efforts, all

the sacrifices he and people around him had made, it was all for naught. He was back where it all

began, in his room in Cirin, about to start his third year at the academy…

…then the moment passed, and the nightmare dissolved.

The room around him was wrong. This wasn’t his room back in Cirin. He was in Cyoria, in the room

he shared with Kirielle, at Imaya’s place.

And the little devil was currently still sprawled across his stomach, kicking her legs up in the air and

giving him a mischievous, expectant look. His panicked reaction didn’t seem to worry her. If

anything, she seemed quite pleased with herself for managing to scare him so thoroughly.

“Kirielle… why?” Zorian asked, resisting the urge to sigh.

“What do you mean?” she asked innocently. “I always wake you up like this?”

“Not with those exact words you don’t,” Zorian groused. “He put you up to this, didn’t he?”

“Zach said it was going to be funnier this way,” Kirielle admitted, propping her chin with her hands.

She gave him a toothy smile.

Zorian flipped her over the edge of the bed in response, causing her to fall to the floor with a silent

thud.

The little imp had expected the reaction, and made no sound in response, simply scrambling to her

feet immediately afterwards.

“It’s been a month already,” Zorian grumbled. “Just when is he planning to stop with this petty

revenge crap?”

It wasn’t like Zorian had wanted to deceive him like that. He’d done that to save Zach’s life, for

heaven’s sake!

Well. At least he hadn’t gotten another punch in the face for that…

He chased Kirielle out of the room and got dressed, idly listening to the sounds of the house and its

tenants as he did. Imaya’s place was very busy these days, nothing like the quiet household Zorian

had gotten used to during the time loop. The academy dorms had suffered heavy damage during the

invasion, both in the initial artillery bombardment and the fighting that had followed afterwards, which

meant that a lot of students were suddenly homeless and in dire need of alternate accommodations.

Since Imaya’s house had survived the invasion mostly intact, it was soon filled to capacity and even

slightly beyond. Zorian didn’t really like it, but the situation was what it was, and there was nothing

he could do to change it.

At least Kirielle had plenty of people to talk to these days.

After composing himself a little, he left the room and entered the kitchen, where a dozen or so

people had already gathered, some of them still eating breakfast, and some of them pondering a

stack of textbooks and papers arranged around them.

Most of the people gathered here were his classmates. Akoja, Raynie, Kiana, Kopriva, Kael, Naim,

Edwin, and Estin were all gathered around the small table that was far too small to really

accommodate them all. They immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to look at him

as he entered, calling out greetings. Ilsa, who was sitting at a relatively prominent place at the table,

was flipping through a stack of papers on her clipboard, and simply gave him a curt nod, before

returning to her task. Nochka, Kirielle, and Kana were on the floor, playing with dolls and getting into

everyone’s way from time to time. Zorian had no idea why they felt the need to play their games

here, instead of somewhere more private, but nobody else was shooing them away, so he wouldn’t

do it either.

As for Imaya, the landlord of this place, she was working around the kitchen while humming a happy

tune to herself, looking like she was having the time of her life, despite the current overcrowded state

of her home. Zorian knew she was getting paid for this, but he still couldn’t quite understand her

good mood. Some people were just weird.

After a few seconds of looking around, Zorian suddenly realized there were no free chairs left

anymore.

“This is what happens when you wake up late,” Kopriva helpfully explained to him.

“There should be some free chairs in the next room,” Imaya added, stirring the contents of some

giant pot, not even bothering to turn around and look at him.

“You should probably grab a nightstand or a wooden board or something, just so you have a surface

to write on,” Edwin told him. “The table is a little crowded right now.”

Resisting a sigh, Zorian went about securing himself a chair and then carving out a place for himself

at the table. This took a considerable amount of pushing and arguing, but eventually he managed to

squeeze himself between Kael and Naim. Imaya immediately plopped down a plate of food in front

of him and immediately walked away, not giving Zorian a chance to tell her he wasn’t hungry.

“You really need to learn how to be more assertive in life,” Naim advised from his left.

Zorian raised his eyebrow at him.

“Weren’t you the one who just tried to chase me away from your side of the table?” Zorian asked.

“Well, yeah, you need to be more assertive towards others, not me,” Naim responded, laughing

slightly.

“Whatever. Where is Zach?” Zorian asked.

“Your friend already left,” Ilsa said, glancing up from her clipboard for a moment. “He said he had a

court meeting scheduled soon, and couldn’t wait for you to wake up.”

“He said you already know how to contact him,” Kael added.

Zorian nodded slowly, giving the food in front of him a tentative bite. After their victory over Jornak

and the invasion, Zach had wasted no time in filing a lawsuit against his caretaker. Zorian had

advised him back then to wait a little for the circumstances to calm down a little, but Zach would

have none of it. This decision had both positive and negative consequences. On one hand, the

spotlight was still firmly focused on the failed invasion of the city, meaning Tesen was free to try and

shut the whole thing down without too much outcry from the public. On the other hand, this was

probably the worst time for Tesen to be accused of something like this, considering the royals were

looking for someone to publically make an example out of, due to the debacle that had happened

and all.

Zorian mostly stayed out of the whole thing. He trusted Zach to know what he was doing. He claimed

he didn’t need any help with this, and he had clearly been prepared for this a long time.

“Aren’t you worried, at least a little?” Akoja said, frowning. “I mean, Tesen is a powerful man, and he

surely knows you and Zach are friends. What if he decides to get back at him by going after you?”

Zorian smiled slightly. He found it interesting how pretty much none of their classmates thought Zach

was lying about his accusations. He had expected that at least some of them would have thought

Zach was making things up, but even Akoja, who definitely wasn’t a fan of Zach, absolutely believed

him when he publically stated Tesen had robbed him of his family legacy.

“I’m not worried,” Zorian said. “This is the worst time to try and attack people in Cyoria. The whole

city is crawling with soldiers and investigators. Tesen would have to be mad to go after me right

now.”

This was not entirely true, of course. Tesen had already tried to send people to scout Imaya’s house

and see if they could ambush him when he left the place, but these people had simply vanished into

thin air before their mission was done.

After that, Zach’s caretaker hadn’t bothered sending anyone else.

“Indeed,” Ilsa said. “Plus, I had the academy secure this house with additional wards, since we are

effectively using it as a makeshift classroom. Anyone trying to infiltrate the place is in for an

unpleasant surprise. And with that, I propose we start our usual lesson now. As you can imagine, an

alteration expert like me is in high demand during this time of reconstruction, so I can only spare so

much time here.”

Everyone immediately gave their assent for the idea, some more enthusiastically than others, after

which Ilsa started giving short demonstrations to the gathered students. Even Kirielle, Nochka, and

Kana paid close attention when Ilsa was casting spells, not having many opportunities to witness

magic spells like this in their daily lives.

The academy was temporarily closed. It had been closed for a month now, ever since the failed

invasion. Not only had many sections of the academy been damaged in the attack, but most of the

teachers had been recruited by the city to help deal with the aftermath as well. The place was

scheduled to reopen in a week or so, if only to stop angry parents from demanding the money they

had paid for attendance fees back, but for now, the student body was told to simply wait.

A large number of students did just that, treating the whole thing as a sort of vacation, but not

everyone was willing to simply waste a whole month or more when they had already paid to learn

how to do magic. These students self-organized into study groups and continued their education on

their own.

Zorian was one of the people leading the charge on such things, at least when it came to his own

class. He knew there were at least a handful of people in there that were serious about becoming a

proper mage, and finding a study group that was not just an excuse to play cards every other night

or some egoist’s attempt to gather underlings was bound to be hard. This sort of initiative was

admittedly not something Zorian was used to, and he had been absent from classes for most of the

previous month, so his announcement that he was starting a study group had definitely raised some

eyebrows. However, the fact that he had managed to talk Ilsa and some of the other teachers into

occasionally giving demonstrations and lectures – something few others could boast about – made

others more willing to trust him.

The fact Akoja had decided to give up on her own study group in favor of choosing his own probably

helped too. Akoja was well known for her serious attitude and work ethic – if she was willing to join

Zorian’s group, he probably wasn’t just messing around.

He even got quite a few requests from older students and students from other classes about joining

the group, though Zorian had to refuse most of them due to time constraints. He didn’t want to spend

most of his time teaching people and managing groups. It just wasn’t something he was seriously

interested in.

“I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong with this spell,” Kael complained.

Zorian glanced at the morlock and at the open book where the spell was detailed.

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Zorian told him. “You’re casting the spell perfectly. Your shaping

skills simply aren’t good enough to pull it off. I can show you some more shaping exercises if you

want.”

“Great,” Kael mumbled. “More shaping exercises. You really remind me of that Xvim guy you

occasionally bring here to teach us.”

“That guy is his mentor, so it kind of makes sense,” Kopriva said. “Based on what I heard about the

guy, you kind of have to go all the way with your shaping skills if you’re assigned to him.”

“As if Zorian is suffering here,” Edwin grumbled. He was, like Zorian, one of the people who had

been assigned to Xvim against his will, and still hadn’t gotten over it. Probably because he really

only cared about magic if it could help him with golem making, and shaping skills weren’t high on the

list of requisites for that. “He’s probably the only guy in the history of our academy that likes the guy

and what he’s teaching.”

“You’d be surprised to know how many people speak highly of Mr. Chao’s teaching skills,” Ilsa

remarked with a teasing smile. “Though most people don’t appreciate his genius, there are always

one or two students that have what it takes to thrive under his tutelage. He didn’t keep his job at the

academy all these years for nothing, you know?”

“We understand he’s good at what he does, but does he really have to be so mean about it?” Kiana

said, pouting. “The last time he was here he said my shaping skills are ‘completely inadequate’. I’m

pretty sure my shaping skills are average at worst.”

“Actually, they’re very much above average now, and it’s almost entirely due to Xvim pushing you

further and further every time he comes here,” Zorian pointed out.

“Teacher’s pet,” Kiana accused him with a huff.

He was pretty sure Kiana was coming here only because Raynie was too, not because she was

honestly so dedicated to improving her magic skills… but to her credit, she really did try to keep up

with the rest of the group, unwilling to be left behind. Thus, whenever Xvim criticized her and pushed

her to try for more, she reluctantly did her best to rise to the challenge.

She didn’t appreciate it right now, but Zorian was sure she would eventually understand that Xvim

was doing her a huge favor. Most people had to pay a fortune to get personal instructions from an

archmage.

After a while, Ilsa excused herself and left. The group continued interacting and helping each other

for a while after that, but eventually people started leaving and the group was becoming smaller. The

table, so crowded and busy earlier in the morning, started to clear up and fall silent.

In the end, the only ones left sitting there were Zorian and Raynie. Zorian had originally wanted to

leave as well, but he could see from the glances Raynie was sending him and the emotions radiating

off of her that she wanted to talk to him, so he remained patient and stayed in his seat.

The invasion had been thwarted. Panaxeth remained sealed. There was no more urgent danger

constantly occupying his attention. He could finally waste an hour or two of his life and not feel bad

about it in the back of his head.

“I just realized it’s been a whole month, and I never thanked you for helping me find my little brother,”

Raynie eventually said, her tone hesitant.

Zorian didn’t know what to say to that. Since she hadn’t mentioned any of this in all this time, he kind

of figured she wanted to pretend the whole thing never happened.

“Sorry,” she said, fiddling with her hands awkwardly. “I know this is very late and-”

“I don’t hold it against you,” Zorian assured her. “I didn’t do much, really. I just put you in contact with

the right people. You did the rest, by organizing the other shifters into a rescue mission.”

“You already heard about that?” she asked, surprised. Then she shook her head. “Wait, of course

you heard about that, what am I even saying? After what I’ve seen that evening, it would be a bigger

surprise if you didn’t know anything about what happened.”

“I hear you rescued your brother successfully,” Zorian remarked.

“The cat shifters and pigeon shifters rescued my brother successfully,” she corrected him. “I just

helped the police contact them and talk them into helping me. Then I just stood by the side and

waited to see if they would succeed. Though yes, the newspapers have been crediting me for the

whole thing. The city police insisted I should be the public face of the whole operation. I don’t really

understand it.”

What was there to understand? She was a beautiful teenage girl with an emotional story of trying to

save her little brother. The police probably didn’t want to release details about what was really going

on before Eldemar’s forces finished their investigation, and this was a nice way of distracting the

public. Plus, it was a story with a happy ending, and Eldemar really loved pushing those to the

forefront right now.

He didn’t say that out loud, of course.

“I’m pretty sure talking those two groups of shifters into cooperating wasn’t easy at all, so don’t put

yourself down so much,” Zorian told her. “That aside, I get the feeling you’re not really mentioning

this because you’re bothered by the newspaper exposure. What’s got you so depressed?”

“I’m not depressed, it’s just… my family has invited me to come back home,” she admitted with a

sigh.

“Ah,” Zorian nodded. He paused for a second, considering. “Is this a problem? You were

instrumental in saving your younger brother, no? They should give you a hero’s welcome.”

“They might,” she admitted. “Or maybe they’ll accuse me of overstepping my boundaries when I

promised our tribe’s help in exchange for help in the rescue mission. I really don’t know what’s going

to happen when I get there, and it scares me.”

Zorian was silent.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she admitted after a while. “It’s not like I expect you to help.

You’ve done more than enough already. I guess I just wanted to complain to someone other than

Kiana for a change. She’s getting a little annoyed with me lately, I think. She thinks being praised in

the newspapers is great, and that I’m being a baby.”

“The newspapers are using you as a distraction and would turn on you in a second if it suited their

purposes, so it’s good you’re not letting it get to your head,” Zorian remarked. “Still, I don’t think you

need to worry. I bet your family also doesn’t know what’s going to happen when you get there. They

probably just want to see where they stand with you, since you surprised them so badly.”

Further conversation was interrupted by a large buzzing sound from a stone disk tied around

Zorian’s waist. Zorian glanced at it, somewhat annoyed. It was a communication device House Aope

had given him so they could contact him, though Zorian hardly thought it deserved to be called a

device. It was just a stone that vibrated when told to by a second stone the Aope were in possession

of, and did nothing else. Rather than convey useful information, the stone disk merely told him that

House Aope representatives wanted to see him as soon as possible. He badly wanted to

make real communication stones for this kind of use – something small and discreet and capable of

facilitating actual two-way telepathy between holders – but doing that would be extremely suspicious

and attention grabbing.

“I’m going to have to cut this meeting short,” he told Raynie.

“The aranea?” Raynie guessed.

Zorian nodded.

“I still can’t believe that’s what you’ve been doing this past month you’ve been absent from classes,”

Raynie said. “Learning mind magic from giant underground spiders…”

“There was no other way,” Zorian said. “My empathy was running out of control and they were the

first ones to realize what was happening, and stepped up to help me. I’m really grateful for their

help.”

Sadly, although Zach and Zorian had been successful in keeping their involvement in the invasion

itself a secret, there was no way to keep Zorian’s involvement with the aranea a secret. This was

because the Cyorian web had no way of hiding itself from Eldemar’s authorities in the wake of the

invasion, and asked Zorian to help them broker some kind of agreement with the city authorities. A

hard task, and one that had given Zorian many headaches during this past month, but thankfully

they had the support of Noble House Aope in this endeavor. It would have probably been an

impossible task, otherwise. Zorian might be a master mind mage, but there was no way he could

compel the entire royal bureaucracy to acknowledge a group of scary telepathic spiders as an ally

against their will. Nor would he want to be that forceful, even if it were within his power.

Sadly, this also meant that knowledge of Zorian’s innate mind magic was gradually becoming more

common. People thought he was a complete beginner at mind magic, yes, but he had already

noticed mages starting to raise their mental shields when he was around, and his empathy told him

some people were scared of him on sight.

He dreaded to think what would happen if the full extent of his abilities became known.

“Well,” said Raynie. “Don’t let me keep you from your duties. I should really get going as well.”

“I guess I won’t be seeing you in our group meetings, then?” Zorian guessed.

“Yes, that was the other thing I wanted to tell you. I knew I was forgetting something,” Raynie said.

“I’ll be travelling home tomorrow, and I will probably stay there until the academy reopens.”

“We’ll see each other in class, then,” Zorian said.

“Hopefully,” she agreed.

The two of them then each left their own way, and the kitchen was once again empty and quiet.

But not for long. Things were always lively at Imaya’s place these days.

- break -

Though it was awful to even think so, Akoja had to say that this invasion business was the best thing

that had happened to her in quite a while.

She always felt guilty whenever the thought occurred to her. So many people had died, lost their

homes, or lost their jobs when their workshops got destroyed, she should really feel sorry for them.

And she did! She really did! But it was also an undeniable fact that the immediate aftermath had

breathed new purpose into her life, giving her both the clarity about what she wanted in life and

opportunities for advancements that she would have otherwise missed.

In the month leading up to the attack of the city, she was lost, and more than a little bitter. She was

putting so much work into her studies, into being a class representative and a model student, yet she

felt it was all for naught. Two years of hard work had not given her any special position or advanced

opportunities, it only made other students resent her and look down on her. Sometimes, when she

sat alone in her dorm room, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was just wasting her time…

Then the attack happened, and it was terrifying. She had only seen a fraction of the fighting, but

what she had seen made her feel like a powerless ant, completely at the mercy of greater forces that

could sweep her up without really trying. When the dust had settled and Akoja looked at the

shattered remains of her old dorm, all of her belongings destroyed, she did not feel anger or despair

at the money she had lost or the time and effort she would have to spend to replace it all. Instead,

she felt a fire ignite within her, urging her to throw herself into her studies and make sure this kind of

thing couldn’t happen ever again. When war came for her again, she wanted to be ready.

And war was definitely coming. Everyone knew it. Akoja wasn’t the most avid follower of news, but

she had read enough newspaper articles and listened to enough rumors to know that Eldemar was

definitely going to launch a punitive expedition at Ulquaan Ibasa in the coming months. Even though

it risked leaving Eldemar vulnerable to opportunistic attacks by Falkrinea and Sulamnon, pride

wouldn’t allow Eldemar to swallow its anger and let this go. The only thing people were unsure of

was how big the retaliation would really be, and how far Eldemar was willing to go to avenge Cyoria.

In any case, if Akoja had been on her own, perhaps her newfound drive would have eventually

petered out in the coming weeks, and she would have once again begun questioning herself. A lot of

people were fleeing the city these days, especially students like her and workers who otherwise lived

elsewhere and only came to Cyoria to make money. A couple of other girls from Korsa she

occasionally talked to had already transferred themselves to other academies elsewhere in the

kingdom, their parents having been spooked by the attack and fearful another one would follow in

the wake of the first. It was, after all, still unclear how Ulquaan Ibasa had been able to strike so deep

into Eldemar territory, so who was to say it couldn’t happen again?

Akoja’s parents had also wanted to transfer her elsewhere, but she had refused. Cyoria may be

dangerous, but she had to stay.

Because Zorian was here.

It wasn’t just because she had a crush on him, either. She talked to people, and it was obvious that

the study group he had organized was the best one currently out there. He had teachers and even

outside mages occasionally coming to provide lessons, which only one other study group had

managed to do, and he himself was clearly very skilled for his age. He had an uncanny ability to

notice the problems people were having, and how to fix them. Akoja had compared her progress

during this past month with two other girls that had paid considerable money in order to be allowed

in one of the ‘better’ study groups, and was shocked to realize she was handily beating them. The

comparison wasn’t even close.

She didn’t know what to think about that. One of the things she really liked about Zorian was that he

was like her – a regular guy from a commoner family that tried really hard and was serious about his

studies. She had always been jealous of big name students who came from noble families, or had

secret magic and bloodlines that gave them an edge over the competition, so it was refreshing to

see someone she could empathize with. Even though he could be a little unfriendly and tactless, she

understood. She herself was often described as bitchy and joyless, so they had common ground

there.

But this new Zorian made her question if she really knew the guy. He was more skilled and well-

connected than she imagined him to be, and apparently even had innate mind magic ability to draw

upon. So unfair. Why didn’t she have a famous older brother and a secret bloodline? How was a

normal girl like her even supposed to compete with that?

But, she eventually decided, it didn’t matter. Maybe her reasons for liking him were kind of

misguided, but she still liked him regardless. And he was helping her get better. So she had to stay

in the city.

It would have been better if she hadn’t stated it quite like that in the letter she had sent to her

parents, though, because now they wanted to meet him. She knew her father – he was definitely

going to come over to Cyoria and confront Zorian on his own if she didn’t manage to defuse the

situation. Hopefully her last letter had reached them in time…

Still, that was thankfully a concern for another day. Today, she was simply going shopping around

the city with Kopriva and Kael. All of her possessions had gotten destroyed in the invasion, after all,

and she still hadn’t had the chance to fully replenish them. Kopriva was in a similar position to her,

while Kael had apparently never had much stuff to begin with, as he had previously tended to

constantly move around with Kana before coming to Cyoria, meaning until recently he owned very

few things.

Neither Kopriva nor Kael was someone that Akoja would have wanted to associate with before the

attack. Kopriva came from a family of criminals, and Kael was a morlock. Neither were people that a

lady in good standing such as her would want to be seen with. However, strange times made for

strange bedfellows. She had gotten to know these two over the past month, and they were alright,

she supposed.

“Wait, so Zach bought you an entire lab?” Kopriva asked incredulously, looking at Kael.

“Well, a damaged, recently abandoned building that can be repurposed into a lab. But yes,” Kael

nodded happily. “Now I can finally stop scaring Miss Kuroshka with the experiments I do in her

basement.”

“Honestly, you were scaring me and the other tenants as well,” Kopriva told him. “Alchemy

experiments shouldn’t be done right below where other people are sleeping, even if the place is

warded. Still, I’m surprised Zach was willing to shell out that kind of money for you. Even if it’s been

damaged in the attack, a building in Cyoria is still bound to be expensive as hell.”

“A lot of people are selling property in Cyoria these days,” Kael noted. “Prices have dropped

considerably.”

“I’m pretty sure it was Zorian who talked Zach into spending money on this,” Akoja said, sighing

internally.

She didn’t like Zach. His recent reveal that his caretaker was stealing from him made Akoja feel

sorry for him a little… but only a little. He was the embodiment of everything she was jealous of

when it came to Eldemar’s mage elite, except he didn’t even try to make something of himself,

content to live the life of a clown and a wastrel. She hoped Zorian, as his new friend, would help him

clean up his act, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

“Probably,” Kael agreed. “I was surprised when people told me they only became friends over the

summer holidays. They seem like they have been friends their whole lives.”

“Yeah, I first thought Zorian was just taking advantage of Zach to get at his money, but these days I

kind of doubt it,” Kopriva said. “He has a serious source of cash of his own, I can tell.”

“From what?” Akoja asked curiously. How could a teenager like Zorian have ‘serious money’ unless

someone gifted it to him?

“Sales,” Kopriva said. “I don’t know what he’s selling, but it must be pretty rare and profitable

because people have been asking about him a lot, trying to get in contact with him.”

“You mean… in your circles?” Akoja asked worriedly.

“Yes, in ‘my circles’,” Kopriva laughed at her. “I’m sorry, but your crush isn’t as clean as you imagine

him to be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Akoja told her quickly. “We’re just colleagues.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kopriva rolled her eyes at her.

“So, I hate to interrupt your conversation,” Kael suddenly said, “but have any of you recently found a

book… or a collection of notes, maybe… in your room?”

“What kind of book?” Akoja asked curiously. What was the boy even talking about?

“A book you’ve definitely never bought, and notebooks you’ve definitely never written,” Kael said.

“Just… sitting there on your night stand, full of magical secrets that seem almost as if they were

specifically tailored to you, and you alone…”

There was a second of silence as the two girls processed this statement.

“That seriously happened?” Kopriva asked incredulously. “You found a book and some notebooks in

your room-”

“My locked room,” Kael clarified. “My locked and warded room that Ilsa later confirmed hadn’t been

broken into.”

“-and they contained a gift of magic specifically tailored for you?” Kopriva finished. “You damn

morlock bastard, first you have a rich guy buy you your very own alchemy lab, and now this? How

are you so damn lucky!?”

“The most disturbing thing,” Kael said hesitantly, ignoring Kopriva’s outburst, “is that some of the

passages use the exact same wording, codes, and symbols that I do. This happens over and over

again, to the point I don’t think anyone can reasonably fake it.”

“What are you saying?” Akoja asked, not really understanding.

“It’s my writing style,” Kael said. “I have several years’ worth of alchemical and medical research,

seemingly made by my hand, but no memory of writing any of it. And I don’t know what to think

about that.”

The two girls stayed silent. Their first instinct was to deny the idea as completely absurd.

But these were mad times they were living in, and nothing was too absurd to fully dismiss. So they

just stayed silent and filed the topic in the back of their heads, put aside but not forgotten, and went

about their shopping in peace.

- break -

Elayer Inid was the special investigator sent by the crown of Eldemar to find out what exactly had

happened in Cyoria on the day of the attack, and he was not happy. Not happy at all.

It wasn’t just about a foreign power having the ability to strike deep into Eldemar’s territory at their

leisure. It wasn’t just about the rampant betrayal among Eldemar’s highest ranks that had allowed

this attack to progress as far as it had.

It was about the fact that someone had stopped the invasion and saved the city, and it wasn’t anyone

that Elayer recognized.

Regular people often talked about mysterious organizations and enigmatic hermits moving about in

the shadows of polite society, but the truth was that organizations that held real power and powerful

individuals didn’t spring out of nowhere. It took a lot of resources and connections to raise a top tier

mage, and even more to build an organization around one. By the time these rising powers were

able and willing to exert their will and influence on the world around them, people like Elayer will

have already noticed them and learned who they were. When mysterious events like the one that

had happened a month ago in Cyoria occurred, investigators were often unsure who exactly was

behind them, especially if the perpetrators had been thorough and erased all the evidence. However,

they always had an idea who could have done it, even if they had no proof or couldn’t narrow down

all the possibilities to one actor.

At the moment, though, Elayer had plenty of evidence. He had witness testimonials, magical

recordings, field reports from soldiers and mages that had been present when the attack took place,

and even material evidence.

And all of it was telling him that this couldn’t have been done by anyone he knew about. Even more

disturbingly, even after he had consulted with some of his foreign sources, he was no closer to

finding a likely candidate. No one had any idea who could have done this. It was as if these ‘saviors’

had materialized straight out of thin air, and vanished just as suddenly afterwards.

Elayer stood in front of the wreckage of a large golem, hands folded behind his back. To his left, two

researchers shuffled uncomfortably in place, hesitating to speak.

“Well?” he asked them impatiently. “Have you identified the maker of this thing?”

“None of the known golem makers produced this, Mister Inid,” one of the researcher said after

fumbling with his clothes a little and clearing his throat. “Although the animation core has been

shattered beyond recovery, enough of it survived that we have been able to make some startling

discoveries. We are very sure the established golem makers would never make such a thing.”

“Hmm? Why is that?” Elayer asked, suddenly curious. Honestly, he thought the golem wreckage

would bring him no answers, so this was a pleasant surprise.

“The spell formulas inscribed on the animation core are completely unprotected,” the other

researcher said. “No codes, no misdirection, no attempts to shroud the method of creation at all.

Usually artificers spend almost as much time trying to hide how they made something as they do

making designs for it. Golem makers especially so. But there is no evidence of that here - whoever

made this thing cared only about pure efficiency.”

“Are you saying we could potentially replicate this thing?” Elayer asked.

Now wouldn’t that be something… he had heard reports about how good these golems were, and it

was apparently something on a whole different level from your typical combat golem. If they could

duplicate one of these, then this would be a huge gain.

When Elayer saw the two researchers share a knowing look with each other, however, he knew it

wouldn’t be that simple.

“The issue is that the animation core has been totally shattered, and some parts of the spell formula

inscribed on it are missing. Even after we compared it with the remains of other golem wrecks we

have recovered from the city, we are still missing about 10% of the design.”

Just 10%?

“And you can’t fill in the blanks?” Elayer asked curiously.

“Heavens no,” the first researcher said, bursting into laughter. “The design for this thing is one of the

most complex things I’ve ever seen in my life. Everything slots together perfectly, and even the

slightest mistake would make everything collapse on itself. And considering how expensive the

materials for the construction of this kind of core are, experimentation would be hellishly expensive.

Never mind 10%, even a 1% gap would make this design completely unviable. Unless we managed

to find an intact golem, the only thing this is useful for is for serving as inspiration.”

“Alright,” Elayer said, turning away from the wreckage and walking off. The two researchers quickly

followed after him. “What is this about some mysterious books that I’m hearing about?”

“Ah, you mean the mysterious gifts some people have been getting?” The second researcher asked.

Elayer nodded. “We have only managed to recover a handful of them from the people they were

given to. Rumors of us confiscating them have spread among people fast, as has the fact they are of

no danger to the recipient, so people no longer report them to us. But from the few we have in our

hands, they seem to be full of novel magic specifically tailored for the recipient.”

“If I may make a suggestion, it might be prudent to return the books we’ve confiscated to the people

they were given to,” the first researcher said. “We’ve already copied the contents, and it might

motivate people to let us take a look at the stuff they’re currently hiding if they see they’re eventually

going to get it back.”

“I’ll think about it,” Elayer said, not thinking much of it. He didn’t like the idea of someone handing

over magical secrets to people like that, not at all. Plus, he had suspicions their mysterious ‘saviors’

were behind this as well. Those ‘gifts’ were evidence and he was keeping them, at least so long as

his investigation lasted.

Infuriatingly, said investigation was encountering a lot of unexpected obstacles. The Triumvirate

Church had clearly been heavily involved in the battle – there was a giant angel battling a dragon

mage in the skies of Cyoria, for heaven’s sake! – but they refused to let him interrogate the

priesthood involved, and the crown was reluctant to offend them. The church had been spectacularly

successful recently, providing valuable help and information on necromancer hideouts, demon

summoner bases, and some of the more awful criminal groups. Elayer had no idea how they had

gotten so much critical information about Eldemar’s criminal underbelly, but they had, and this

unfortunately meant they currently had an upper hand over him and his investigation.

At the same time, Elayer was having trouble keeping the funds and manpower for the investigation

going. Eldemar’s attention had been stretched very thin lately. They had an invasion of Ulquaan

Ibasa to organize, complicated heavily by the fact the Ibasans had somehow managed to take over

Fort Oroklo without Eldemar realizing it. They were throwing a lot of money and manpower at Cyoria

in order to get the city up and running again in order to make a show of strength and lift up morale,

and these efforts often clashed greatly with Elayer’s own investigation into what had transpired

there. Sulamnon, Falkrinea, and even many smaller countries were stirring, trying to see just how

badly the kingdom had been hurt and whether they could fish in troubled waters while Eldemar’s

forces were distracted elsewhere. And finally, there was that permanent gate that linked Eldemar

with the jungles of Koth, which had everyone and their mother excited about the incredible

opportunities this presented. The gate was clearly related to the Ibasan invasion somehow, but

Elayer and his men were not allowed to examine it closely for fear that they would destroy the

precious, irreplaceable, intercontinental gate with their tampering.

Bah. And then his superiors complain he has no results. Of course he had no results! Just what did

they expect when they constantly keep taking his money and resources, and don’t let him touch

things or question people?

But Elayer was patient. His foes may have won this round, but he knew what to look for now, and

everyone slipped up sooner or later. It may take a year, or even a decade, but they were bound to

make a mistake.

And when they did, Elayer would be there, and he would be ready.

- break -

Daimen Kazinski was having a stressful, but very exciting month. From the day he had woken up in

an unknown room in Cyoria with an entire month of his life missing from his memory, it had been a

non-stop wild ride of crazy reveals and maddening complications. It was annoying, but truth be told,

he kind of enjoyed it. A safe, boring life had never been something he coveted. He somewhat

resented his little brother for wiping away a month of his life to save his friend, but he understood. He

would have done the same in his place, probably.

At the very least, Daimen could safely say he had profited handsomely from this whole time loop

business. Not only had Zorian gifted him a veritable treasure of research and notes he had

apparently made for himself during this ‘time loop’, but he also indirectly allowed the Taramatula to

seize the permanent gate linking Koth to Eldemar.

A permanent intercontinental gate… the sheer possibilities of that thing were breathtaking to

consider. Eldemar’s forces quickly moved to secure their side of the gate, but they didn’t try to push

through it to monopolize the whole thing. It would be too easy for the Taramatula to simply destroy

their side of gate back in Koth, and thus ruin this whole thing for everyone. Thus, the Kingdom of

Eldemar and the Taramatula now found themselves in possession of a permanent dimensional link

between continents. Both sides were positively salivating at the potential profits and other benefits

involved, and since Daimen was closely connected to both of said parties, it was often up to him to

act as a bridge and negotiator between these two sides.

And then there was Zorian… his little brother, the time traveler. Well, it wasn’t real time travel, but it

may as well be, from Daimen’s point of view. He had beheld a doomed future, and then he had

traveled back to their own world to stop it, and save as many people as possible in the process.

And in order to pull it off, he’d had to kill the original Zorian, and steal his body for his own uses.

Daimen would have liked to say he was conflicted about this information. Zorian was right: in a very

real sense, his little brother had been murdered and replaced by an imposter. He should have been

outraged. He should have been deeply disturbed by the implications, just like Zorian himself clearly

was.

But he wasn’t. Maybe it was because the whole situation was so utterly ridiculous and it was hard to

really know what to feel. Maybe it was because, by Zorian’s own admission, the original Zorian hated

him something fierce. Or perhaps it was because he damn well knew that if he had been in Zorian’s

position, he would have murdered his own original without a shred of hesitation and thought nothing

of it. All he knew was that he’d simply told Zorian that everything would be fine, and that he shouldn’t

worry about it. He had only done what he had to.

Maybe it was just Daimen imagining things, but he thought he’d seen a small flash of gratitude in his

brother’s eyes when he said that. He hadn’t expected the big bad time traveler to actually care about

his opinion that much. Interesting.

Now, here they were – every Kazinski sibling gathered together. Daimen, Zorian, Kirielle, and Fortov

were all standing next to one another at Cyoria’s train station, waiting for the next train to arrive.

Their parents were coming to Cyoria.

It was kind of funny, actually. If his parents had arrived to Koth as planned, they could have been

here way earlier. Daimen would have arranged for them to step through the brand new

interdimensional gate linking Koth to Eldemar, and they would have been home before you knew it.

Alas, they’d actually heard about the attack on Cyoria when they had almost reached their

destination, and decided to immediately switch ships and turn back. As a consequence, they had

spent almost an entire month in transit before they were able to return to Eldemar.

Sighing inwardly, Daimen noticed that no one except him looked actually excited about that fact.

Zorian looked bored and disinterested, clearly intending to just get this over with as quickly and

painlessly as possible. Fortov seemed nervous and unsure how to behave. His other younger

brother had been acting strangely ever since Daimen had evacuated him from Cyoria along with

Kirielle, and Daimen had no idea what was going on in his head at the moment, but he clearly wasn’t

looking forward to this meeting. As for Kirielle, she was playing around with the fancy snow globe

Zorian had bought for her while they had been waiting for the train to arrive, but Daimen could see

she was extremely nervous under this disinterested facade.

He should have brought Orissa with him, he lamented. He had originally left her behind because he

didn’t want to provoke his parents in this particular meeting, since they were bound to be extremely

distraught already, but now he wondered if her presence would have been a positive thing instead.

It was too late for such regrets, however. The train soon entered the station and began to disembark;

it wasn’t long before Daimen spotted their parents.

They weren’t carrying much in the way of luggage. Daimen winced internally. It made sense, since

they must have dropped off most of their stuff when they had stopped by in Cirin. Still, the fact they

were carrying practically nothing meant they expected this to be a very short visit. This… was

probably going to get unpleasant.

Not long after Daimen had spotted their parents, they also spotted him. The two groups quickly

made their way towards one another.

“For heaven’s sake, what are you children still doing in this city?” Mother complained the moment

they were within earshot.

“Mother-” Daimen tried futilely.

“The whole city was under siege until recently. The academy is closed. Why aren’t you all back in

Cirin already?” she continued. Father was totally silent, simply studying each of them in turn. Once

he saw that all of them were unharmed, he seemed to relax a little. Most wouldn’t be able to tell, but

Daimen was the closest to Father out of all the Kazinski siblings, and could read his little tics pretty

well by this point. “Never mind, I’ll help you pack your bags and we’ll be home by tomorrow.”

“What? No we won’t,” Zorian simply told her in a bored tone of voice.

“Zorian, please let me handle this,” Daimen urged in a low tone of voice.

Father gave Zorian a penetrating look for his statement, a gesture that would usually instantly put

Zorian on the defensive, but of course, this time traveler Zorian was not bothered by it in the

slightest. Zorian didn’t talk about family all that much, but Daimen got the notion that Zorian had

barely interacted with Mother and Father during the time loop. The two were practically strangers to

him, and it showed in his attitude towards them.

That, more than the fact he’d had to kill his original self to be here, greatly disturbed Daimen.

“You seem to have grown some spine in the short time you’ve been here,” Father remarked, still

staring intently at Zorian. He didn’t say whether this was good or bad, but Daimen knew he thought it

was both. He liked when his sons had a firm, decisive attitude, but he also didn’t tolerate disrespect

towards himself and Mother.

“Zorian is just dedicated to his studies,” Daimen hurriedly explained, shooting Zorian a quick look to

shut him up. “Just because the academy is closed doesn’t mean we’re all doing nothing. Zorian is

organizing a study group for his class so they can continue studying on their own in private. He even

got some of the teachers to help him out.”

“But Kirielle-” Mother tried.

“I like it here!” Kirielle immediately exclaimed. “I have friends here and everything!”

“It’s dangerous here,” Mother said firmly. She glanced around the group for a second. “I really regret

not taking her with us this time, but what’s done is done. What I don’t understand is how you could

all let her stay here under the circumstances. She must be terrified after what happened here!”

“But I’m not!” Kirielle protested.

“Quiet,” Mother barked at her.

Kirielle immediately shrank back.

Out of the corner of his eye, Daimen could see Zorian’s mood immediately worsen. Out of all of them

here, Kirielle was the one Zorian cared about the most. Daimen was pretty sure his little brother

would be willing to make an enemy out of his whole family for Kirielle’s sake, which was more than a

little disturbing. Kirielle was a cute kid, but she could be a massive brat sometimes.

“Anyway, if Zorian is as busy as you say, what about Fortov?” Mother continued. “He could have

taken Kirielle back to Cirin just fine, yes?”

“Yes, he’s already a failed student wasting his time and our money here,” Father agreed. “Why not

have him be useful for a change?”

“You!” Fortov protested, visibly outraged.

“Am I wrong?” Father challenged.

“Why even send me back here if that’s what you think about me!?” Fortov protested.

“Please, Father,” Daimen urged. “Look, I know Fortov had some issues with his studies lately…”

Father scoffed. Mother sighed. Fortov looked furious, and very bitter.

“…but I have been giving him some help lately, and I’m sure he’ll turn the situation around,” Daimen

said.

He had promised to take care of Fortov back in the time loop, apparently. Although Daimen didn’t

remember it, he had to admit Fortov needed his help. Certainly Zorian made it clear he didn’t want to

do anything with the guy. Apparently, despite having lived in the same city for years, Zorian had

never bothered to interact with his brother and figure out how to help him.

For all his newfound maturity, this new Zorian still had clear traces of his old self.

He sure could nurse a grudge, for instance.

“And for how long will that last?” Father challenged. “You’ll be back in Koth soon, I imagine, and then

he’ll be back on his own. I doubt one month will make that much difference.”

“Actually, I’m going to be around much more often than I usually am,” Daimen said. “Haven’t you

wondered how I got here before you?”

Father and Mother looked at each other.

“Well… I thought maybe you used the teleport network…” tried Mother.

Daimen shook his head with a slight smile.

“Mother, Father… I want to show you something. We can go and meet my fiancée and her family

now, if you’re willing. It’s what you were travelling to Koth for, after all.”

“What? They came here with you?” Mother asked incredulously. Daimen understood her disbelief. A

single individual like him could conceivably cross large distances on a whim, but a small group of

people was a much bigger challenge.

“You’ll see,” Daimen said with a grin. “Things are going to change a lot in the future, I think. Who

knows, maybe even your family business might profit out of this.”

Thankfully, this was sufficiently interesting that it distracted Mother and Father from further

questioning. He knew that sooner or later, Mother would realize that Zorian had already started

teaching Kirielle magic behind her back and that her beloved daughter had been literally attacked by

assassins during the invasion – if nothing else because Kirielle was sure to blurt it out at some point

– and that once she did, there would be hell to pay. For now, though, the crisis had been aver-

“Zorian! Hey! Zorian!”

Daimen looked at the person calling out to his brother and saw a chubby boy with a happy smile on

his face hurrying over. An older, well-dressed man with a mustache followed behind him at a more

sedate pace. Probably the boy’s father.

The funny thing about this was that the boy clearly acted like he was Zorian’s friend, but Daimen

himself had never seen Zorian interact with him at all. That was interesting to say the least.

“Hey Zorian! I see you already got back, too!” the boy said once he got closer.

“I never left, Ben,” Zorian said politely.

Oh, so they did know each other. By this point the boy’s father also arrived, though he stayed silent

behind the boy. He simply gave a small nod and quiet greeting to the gathered Kazinskis before

waiting for his son to calm down.

“You never left? Man, you work too hard,” the chubby boy said. “I heard you got roped into being an

ambassador for some giant spiders. You got to introduce me to them someday, man. Sounds like

one hell of an experience.”

There was a long silence as all the Kazinski siblings looked incredibly uncomfortable.

“What?” the boy said, realizing he made some kind of mistake. “What did I say?”

“Giant… spiders?” Mother repeated.

Daimen couldn’t help it. He sighed audibly this time.

So much for averting disaster.

- break -

As he walked through the streets of the city and observed the reconstruction efforts around him,

Zorian couldn’t help but feel satisfied with how things had been going lately. There were a few

complications here and there, but the city was slowly beginning to recover, and neither Zach nor

Zorian had been implicated in what had happened. The thanks for that partially went to Alanic, due

to him running interference on their behalf in exchange for helping him clean up Eldemar of various

threats, as well as Eldemar having its hands full with all kinds of problems these days, but mostly it

was because they were currently complete unknowns to most people, so nobody even suspected

they could have been involved. Zorian sincerely hoped that by the time they were forced to reveal

some of their real skills, too much time will have passed, and people would not connect the dots

linking them to the events that had taken place during the invasion.

Sadly, his quiet enjoyment of the city was marred by the fact people kept giving him curious and

occasionally fearful glances as he passed them, the crowds parting in front of him like he was

diseased.

Well, they probably weren’t doing that because of him, specifically. Rather, it was because of the

giant telepathic spider strutting around the city beside him. Spear of Resolve seemed completely

unperturbed by the reception, however, and gave no indication this sort of behavior bothered her. If

anything, she seemed immensely pleased with herself that she could walk through the city of Cyoria

in broad daylight without being immediately attacked, or met with screams and calls for help. This

was already a victory for her and her web.

The aranea hadn’t been entirely accepted by the city authorities yet. Legally, they were still

considered monsters that had no rights, and there was a portion of Eldemarian leadership that really

wanted to just wipe them out or drive them out of the city. However, the aranea had quietly gathered

a considerable amount of support in the city over the years, so there was also no shortage of people

willing to argue on their behalf. More importantly, even the critics that considered them dangerous

telepathic parasites had to admit they were instrumental in preventing the various threats from the

lower reaches of the dungeon from menacing the city. Considering the amount of destruction and

suffering Cyoria had suffered recently, the last thing it needed was to go through a monster invasion

too because some general couldn’t tolerate the aranea living beneath the city.

The opinion of regular citizens was, from what Zorian could understand, somewhat mixed. The

aranea were said to have helped fight the invaders, which won them some good will, but they were

also monsters, spiders, and mind mages. None of those three sounded good to the average citizen.

Accordingly, when people saw Spear of Resolve walking down the street like she always belonged

there, their reactions were… mixed, to say the least.

Thankfully both Zorian and Tinami were accompanying her on this stroll to make sure no incident

occurred. Zorian was certain that Spear of Resolve was resourceful enough to evade any real

conflict with frightened citizens, but it was best not to risk things.

“So how are the negotiations going?” Zorian asked Spear of Resolve, not bothering to use telepathy

for Tinami’s sake. The Aope had managed to secure a magic exchange with the aranea, and Tinami

was a part of that, but she wasn’t psychic, and her advancement was slow. She wasn’t good enough

for casual telepathy yet.

“Somewhat disappointingly,” Spear of Resolve admitted, using sound magic to speak out loud as

well. “We have managed to block any initiative to have us driven out of our homes, but it’s unlikely

we will get legal recognition any time soon.”

“That was always a little naïve of you to expect,” Tinami told her. The Aope usually preferred to

employ older and more experienced people for these kinds of meetings, but Tinami was the

designated heir of the House, and she was throwing her weight around to get personally involved in

something that very much interested her. “You’re still too much of an unknown for people to trust

you, regardless of your help with the invasion.”

“Oh, I know that,” Spear of Resolve assured her. “I didn’t expect a better outcome, so much as hope

for it. I have already made the necessary preparations. The colony can retreat from Cyoria on a

moment’s notice, if it becomes necessary.”

“Where would you go, though?” Tinami asked. “I can’t imagine there are that many places suitable

for your kind.”

“We would simply assault one of the smaller webs around the area and steal their home for

ourselves,” Spear of Resolve said blandly. “The aranean world is a rather brutal place, I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” Tinami lamely responded.

“I heard your academy is about to reopen soon,” Spear of Resolve said, turning slightly towards

Zorian before resuming her walk.

“So I’m told,” Zorian said. He spotted Taiven and her team in the distance, trailing after a large group

of other mages, and gave her a small wave. She waved back, but didn’t linger or try to talk to him,

simply following after her group so she wouldn’t slow them down. She looked happy, though. In the

wake of the invasion, there was an urgent demand for combat mages, so she had plenty of job offers

and opportunities to prove herself. “If it doesn’t start again soon, the parents that didn’t get frightened

by the attack will start pulling their children out of the academy out of concern they’re not getting

taught anything.”

He looked at Tinami, somewhat curious as to how she was handling that. She had never expressed

any desire to join their study group, or any study group for that matter. Was she so focused on this

aranean business that she had no problems putting her education on hold for a month, or did she

have some kind of alternate arrangements?

“My family has arranged private instruction for me,” Tinami admitted, somehow guessing his

thoughts. “I mean no offense to your study group and your efforts, but this seemed a better idea.”

She was probably right. As good as he was, he wasn’t really a teacher and he had a whole group to

deal with anyway. Tinami probably would get far better results out of private instructors. It kind of

made him wonder why her family had even sent her to the academy in the first place, if they could

just hire a bunch of private instructors for her. Was it too expensive? Did they just want her to

socialize with people? Hmm…

“I have a favor to ask of you, then,” Spear of Resolve told Zorian. “I’ve made some arrangements

with the academy to let Novelty attend a few of your classes as an observer. I’d like you to keep an

eye on her and stop her from getting herself into more trouble than she can handle.”

“Hmm? Why would you do that?” Zorian frowned. “I know she wants to learn human magic, but do

you have any idea how mundane and repetitive our classes are? She’ll be bored out of her skull in

three days, maximum. It would be better to just have her come to me for instruction. I did promise I

would teach her, after all.”

“No offense Zorian, but you’re just a beginner mage still,” Tinami said frowning. “You’re not really

qualified to teach a member of a completely different species how to do magic. That kind of thing is

best left for actual experts.”

“Uh, yeah, I meant I would teach her later,” Zorian fumbled slightly. “Years later, when I mature into

a mage who is qualified to help her. That’s what I meant.”

Tinami gave him a really strange look.

“It’s a good thing for Novelty to receive a much-needed reality-check from time to time, so I’m not

really concerned about her being bored out of her mind there,” Spear of Resolve said, ignoring their

interaction. “Besides, I didn’t mean for this to become a regular thing. I just want to have the

students see an aranea walking around and interact with them a bit. It’s a publicity stunt more than

anything.”

“Oh, so this is kind of like what we’re doing right now,” Tinami said. After all, it wasn’t like they had to

have this conversation in the middle of a street where random people could see them. They could

have just as easily met in a private room inside the Noveda Estate, or even inside one of the many

Aope properties, but Spear of Resolve insisted they had to do this this way.

“Yes, exactly,” Spear of Resolve said.

“I have to ask… why Novelty?” Tinami asked suddenly. “Not that I dislike her or anything, but I get

the notion that you’re pushing her pretty hard, and I can’t figure out why. She is not exactly someone

I would pick for an ambassador if I had to choose. Surely you have aranea that are more… solemn

than her.”

“Enthusiastic Seeker of Novelty is more suited for the role than you might think,” Spear of Resolve

said after a short pause. “You have to understand that the number of aranea living beneath Cyoria

is… not that great. We must hunt to survive, so we can’t support large populations. Of the people I

do have, many have no interest in learning how to interact with humans, or even downright look

down on them.”

“Ah. The flickermind thing,” Tinami said, sniffing disdainfully.

“Yes, that. The point is that I really don’t have all that much to work with, and Novelty is one of the

few aranea who is downright enthusiastic about going out into the city and meeting humans face-to-

face. Besides, while her antics might not be exactly professional, I’ve noticed they put many humans

at ease better than a solemn, respectful approach. They often perceive her as a harmless clown, or

an innocent little girl, which never fails to amuse me. She’s an adult aranea specializing in

interactions with humans. She’s far more dangerous to a human than your average, less excitable

aranea.”

“Oh. I didn’t think of it like that,” Tinami admitted.

What Spear of Resolve didn’t say, but what Zorian strongly suspected, was that she was pushing

Novelty partly because she knew Zorian liked her. It was clear to him that the Cyorian web was

determined to build a closer relationship with him and keep him as close to them as possible, so it

made sense to have Novelty talk to him.

After a few more circles around the center of the city, the three of them separated and went about

their own business. Zorian never went home, however, instead choosing to continue wandering the

city, lost in his own thoughts.

He picked up a couple of newspapers as he walked, and idly flipped through them. As he expected,

most of the news was still dedicated to the attack on the city, even a whole month after it happened.

An article about the sulrothum warriors that had helped the defenders during the attack caught his

eye, if only because of the detailed drawing of a flying sandworm hovering above the city. He

remembered that one… the devil wasps had refused Zorian’s offer of simply gating them back home

to their ziggurat and had decided to instead have their giant flying sandworm pick them up and

slowly fly them back to their continent. Some kind of power play, probably. Thankfully, no one in

Eldemar had been in the mood to pick a fight with a giant flying sandworm, so they let them leave

without incident.

Leafing through the articles more thoroughly, he also found subtle clues that the people who had

received his ‘gifts’ had already started to make waves with the knowledge he provided them with. In

all honesty, Zorian had yet to hand out even a fraction of the stuff he owed to people for their help. It

would take him literal years to finish paying back his debts this way, but he would persist. In any

case, he was glad people were starting to make use of the knowledge they had been given. It

assured him he wasn’t doing all that in vain.

He had also started writing a book on mind magic, but that was still in its early stages, and nowhere

near to completion. Publishing anything related to mind magic on a wide scale was going to be

difficult, but he would find a way.

Hours passed, and the night began to fall. Zorian still continued to wander the streets of the city,

restless. Though he had no real emergency to worry about, it somehow felt wrong to him to just lay

around and do nothing. He had spent so much time constantly on the move, constantly tackling one

crisis after another, that he felt like he had to do something with himself… even if that something

was basically wandering the city with no clear aim in sight.

His mind wandered to the couple of issues he still hadn’t dealt with. For instance, Princess. The

giant divinely-enhanced hydra had survived her fight with Oganj’s apprentice, and Zorian had no

idea what he was going to do with her. There was no way to transfer ownership of her to Zach, so he

was stuck with her. Thankfully, she was doing just fine for now, lazing around in the Great Northern

Forest, but he knew that couldn’t continue forever. He had to figure out what to do with her one of

these days.

Another complication was the giant iron beak flock. Zorian had simply released them into the

northern wilderness when he had been checking up on Princess, thinking they would simply scatter

and continue on with their own lives from now on. Instead, they decided to stick around Princess and

now followed her around everywhere, helping her hunt and feeding on the remains of her prey when

she had her fill. It made Princess far more noticeable and eye-catching than she would have

otherwise been, and made the question of what to do with her all the more pressing.

He also didn’t know what to do about Mrva. He had managed to get the golem colossus out of

Cyoria before the army could move in and confiscate him, but his precious construct was still

completely non-functional and the place where he was storing him was not really as secure as he

would have liked.

Annoyingly, he was probably going to have to tolerate this state of affairs for quite a long time.

Restoring Mrva back into combat condition and making a properly secure place to house him in

would both take a large amount of money… and money was annoyingly hard to get out of the time

loop. There were no more invader caches and bank accounts to steal from, so unless he wanted to

prey on innocent citizens he had to find other sources of funds... and vastly scale down his

expenses.

He had a bit of a problem, in all honesty. During the time loop he'd gotten into the habit of spending

money like water, and though he was mindful of it after their victory, he still struggled to keep his

expenses under control. He still had a sizeable stash of funds to draw upon, but it was constantly

getting smaller by the day. He had tried to get large sums of money by selling some of his creations,

but that had drawn way more attention than he had thought it would, so he was forced to stop with

that for the time being. The only thing he could do was, ugh... spend less.

At least until he found a convenient way to make a lot of money without it making huge waves or

being traced back to him.

He stopped walking and looked at the full moon shining bright in the skies above. For some reason,

the sight of the night sky, accompanied by the warm night air, helped put his mind at ease.

“Well, Zorian, you wanted a normal life,” he said out loud to himself, “Now you’re having money

problems. What could be more normal than that?”

“You said it, brother!” an unknown man shouted at him from his left. It wasn’t anyone Zorian knew –

it was just some drunk that happened to be close by. Drunk enough to be spouting nonsense, but

sober enough to make himself understood. “I too am comp-le-tely penniless! I spent every-thing I

had tonight… and there is nothing wrong with that! What could be more normal than that? Yes in-

deed, yes in-deed, yes in-deed…”

Zorian sighed, and then turned in the direction of Imaya’s house. He supposed it really was time to

get some sleep.

- break -

She had no name. She did not need one. She was a hunter and a mother, devoid of any higher

purpose except for surviving, protecting her territory, and raising as many offspring as she could.

But that was Before. After her last feast, she had found herself imbued with greater purpose. The

essence of her prey, the hated two-legs that had provoked her again and again, had proven so

sweet and so powerful. It filled her up, suffusing her in a way she had never experienced before,

then filtered through her and settled inside her eggs.

Her eggs were special now, she knew. The brood that would hatch out of them was going to be

special too. She had always guarded her eggs and young diligently and with passion, only chasing

them off when they grew too big and needy, but this time it was different. These eggs, and the young

that would hatch from them, had to be guarded with her life. She would do anything to keep them

safe. She would die for them if she had to.

With her special purpose and her special eggs, there came a voice, an urge. She had to go deeper.

Her new children couldn’t be satisfied with the weak prey that lived on the surface, or even the more

palatable things that wandered the upper tunnels of the world. No, if she wanted to raise them right,

she had to go deep, deep, deep – deeper than she would ever dare go under normal circumstances.

She was mighty, but some of the things that made their homes here could end her in a moment if

she weren’t careful.

She was afraid. She wanted to go back, go up, return to the safety of higher hunting grounds… but

the urge, her purpose was stronger.

She had to survive. She had to protect her eggs. She had to go deeper.

So despite her fears, despite what all her life experience was telling her, she stubbornly kept going

deeper…

…where her destiny awaited.

Afterword

You have reached the end of the story. What follows is merely some general musings about the

story and what comes next. If this doesn’t interest you, feel free to click away.

When I first started posting Mother of Learning on Fictionpress, all the way in 2011, I had no idea it

would become as popular as it did. The story, as it was originally conceived, was meant to be a tool

for fleshing out the fantasy setting I was building. I had noticed that diving into the setting from the

perspective of an actual person living inside it really helped me notice the missing details and

various inconsistencies that I would have otherwise missed or glossed over if I was just looked at it

from a big picture perspective. Mother of Learning was simply going to be a way for me to visualize

the daily life inside the world I was building.

I needed a plan, of course. I knew from my previous writing attempts that I wasn’t one of those

people who can write a story while making things up as they go along. Rather than picking

something sensible, however, I chose to make it an epic time travel plot spanning multiple continents

and involving a small legion of supporting characters. Because if I’m already going to dream, might

as well dream big, right?

Right. I wrote a story summary, outlining the entire novel from start to finish. I created a character

document containing brief descriptions of all important characters. And then I sat down and started

writing.

I wrote about eight chapters before I decided they were not good enough and just plain wrong. So I

completely discarded them all and started from scratch.

I then wrote four brand new chapters. I soon discarded them as well. They were no good, either.

The third time I also wrote four chapters, but this time I actually liked the result. I liked it so much, in

fact, that I decided it wouldn’t hurt to share my work with the world. I posted all four chapters on

Fictionpress, thinking I would be lucky to get even a hundred regular readers. Nine years later and

here we are.

Mother of Learning is finally done. I very much enjoyed writing it, but I’m glad it’s done. It was meant

to end here, and being able to bring it to a completion feels good. Some parts of the original concept

had to be cut out of the story as it progressed, but I feel the story is ultimately better for it. I was a

very inexperienced writer when I first made the original story plan, and its sheer scope was almost

unreal. It’s a miracle it served me as well as it had by the end of it.

The story is not perfect by any means. Over the years, I have seen a fair amount of criticism about

my work and writing style that feels true. I am pretty sparse in my descriptions, for instance,

especially of people. My characters apparently have a tendency to sound very similar to one

another. My word choice can be occasionally jarring to perceptive readers, since I often use modern

terms without thinking about whether or not they fit the setting. Some of the info dumps and

extended explanations probably drag on a little too much. Parts of the story, especially ones towards

the end of it, can feel rather hurried and poorly paced, and I’m not sure I really did them justice.

Still. I am happy with how the story turned out in the end, and I am happy to have found so many

readers interested in reading this silly story of mine. My audience has been extraordinarily patient

and generous to me over the years, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I hope that, having read entire story now, you find the journey to have been worth it.

>What do you intend to do now?

Well, in the short term, I intend to sit down and do some editing. I have received many, many typo

reports and lists of mistakes from my readers, but I have been focusing solely on writing new

chapters for a while now, so they have simply been gathering dust in my editing folder. Now that the

story is over, I intend to go over each chapter and correct all the typos people found, so that new

readers stumbling on the story have a less frustrating experience.

Also, while the story itself is done, I intent to continue writing more worldbuilding articles for the

setting of the story as a whole. Ironically, despite starting the story to help with my worldbuilding, I

have kind of been ignoring the worldbuilding side of things. That’s kind of sad, so I hope that will

change now that the story is done.

>You should publish the story!

I fully intend to look into publishing options, now that the story is done. I’ve been putting this off

until Mother of Learning was finished, since it’s bound to be a time-consuming and frustrating task.

Since I am almost entirely ignorant of what this will involve, however, I will not make any promises in

regards to this.

>Do you intend to continue writing after this?

Of course. I like writing and I have plenty of ideas for new stories after this. I’m not sure if the ideas

are any good, but I certainly have no shortage of them. I’m going to have to make some story plans

and write up some test chapters, but I’ll be sure to come back with another story.

>Are you going to write a sequel to Mother of Learning?

Maybe. Definitely not any time soon, but I do have some ideas about a possible sequel eventually.

My current idea is that it wouldn’t be nearly as long or grand as the original, and would mostly focus

on showing the aftermath of the original and what the characters do in their everyday life. A sort of

extended epilogue, more slice-of-life than a grand mystery of the original.

Anyway. This is still in very rough stage, and I can’t even guarantee that it’s going to happen for

sure. I guess you’ll just have to wait and see about this one.

>What was your inspiration for the story, anyway?

Various Dungeons & Dragons content, the Avernum series of games, Fullmetal Alchemist manga and

anime, and time loop fanfiction.

>Anything else you want to say?

Nope. This is it. Thank you for reading and have a nice day.

Chapter 004-B

The Fourth Looper

Hidden in the shadow of a damaged building, Zorian watched Zach fight against a horde of monsters

in quiet awe. Regardless of whether it was war trolls, winter wolves, or iron beaks, none of the

creatures could get close to Zach. A flash of fire, a barrage of force needles, and they all fell before

the boy’s magical might. The only creatures that saw any success against the boy were iron beaks,

since they could launch their feathers from a considerable range and were relatively small and

maneuverable. Even then, Zach dealt with most feathers by side-stepping the attack or making slight

body movements, dodging the feathers with casual ease.

It was unbelievable. The magic Zach was using was leagues better than that of a normal student,

which made no sense since it was completely at odds with what Zach displayed in their first two

years of classes. Zorian couldn’t claim he knew Zach especially well, but the boy he knew wasn’t

subtle or restrained, and didn’t strike him as someone capable of keeping this kind of secret.

And the dodging… Zorian couldn’t imagine how long he would have to practice something like this in

order to be able to do it with such ease and confidence. Improbable magic skills could be explained

away by great natural talent, perhaps, but this was something else. Zorian was so transfixed by the

sight of Zach practically dancing through the hail of feathers like this was all just a giant theater play

that he failed to notice one of the winter wolves sneaking up on him.

Zorian jumped back when he sensed danger, but it was already too late. The winter wolf was already

very close, and it lunged at him too fast to avoid. The winter wolf tried to clamp its jaws around

Zorian’s neck, but since Zorian managed to jump back and instinctively crossed his arms in front of

him in a feeble instinctive move to ward off the attack, it didn’t quite succeed. Instead, the wolf’s

maw closed around his forearms, ripping skin and tearing flesh.

Zorian screamed, his panicked wail easily heard over the sounds of fighting around them, but he

was already unbalanced from his failed dodge and the winter wolf soon slammed into him with its

considerable weight and knocked the air out of his lungs, shutting him up.

Zorian fell backwards on his back, and the wolf fell along with him. Thankfully, the beast failed to

keep its balance as they fell. It let go of Zorian’s arms and rolled away a short distance away from

him, giving Zorian a moment to gather his bearings and attempt to escape.

It wasn’t enough. Zorian’s arms were terribly injured and hurt immensely as he attempted to push

himself up, his glasses were missing somewhere, and he had hit his head when he hit the ground.

He had just enough time to lift his head before the wolf was already upon him again, ready to finish

the job this time.

A blindingly bright bolt of force hit the winter wolf in the flank as it jumped towards Zorian, easily

knocking it off-course and slamming it into the wall of a nearby house. Its entire body caved in upon

impact, bones and internal organs crushed into paste by the force of the spell.

A web of cracks was created on the wall of the building where the wolf slammed into it. Although it

was a silly thought, inappropriate for the severity of the situation, Zorian couldn’t help but imagine

Ilsa criticizing Zach for his reckless use of combat magic and causing so much collateral damage.

His arms hurt. His arms hurt a lot and he felt a wave of dizziness and nausea assault him for a

moment. Perhaps because of all the bleeding he was doing…?

“Zorian! Damn it, are you all right!?”

Zach quickly ran up to him, killing any creature that sought to bar his way, and helped him get back

on his feet. With Zach’s help, they managed to lose the monster horde and found a quiet place for

Zorian to calm down and recover.

Zorian winced as he looked at his arms. Winter wolves had powerful jaws, and while his arms

weren’t broken or insensate, the wounds were serious. When the wolf lost its grip on Zorian in the

fall, its teeth ripped out chunks of his flesh and left his forearms covered in deep gashes that kept

bleeding and hurting.

The back of his head also had a painful bump on it, but that was comparatively minor in comparison.

Looking around, Zorian managed to spot his glasses lying on the ground, and was pleased to see

they weren’t broken. While he moved to pick them up, Zach was busy rummaging through his

belongings for something. The other boy eventually fished out a pair of potions out of a jacket pocket

and gave them to Zorian.

“A blood clotting potion, and some kind of healing potion,” Zach explained. “I’m not sure what it’s

called, but it should help.”

Zorian visibly winced. Drinking medical potions provided by strangers was usually not a good idea,

and Zach’s explanation didn’t exactly soothe Zorian’s fears in this regard. But truthfully, Zorian didn’t

doubt for a second that Zach was offering him the real deal. Zach was clearly ridiculously capable in

all sorts of way. The thing was… well…

“The price of these… I can’t…” he feebly protested.

“Zorian, are you really going to bleed out here just because you’re too proud to accept an expensive

gift?” Zach gave him a strange look.

Zorian didn’t bother to argue with the boy after that. He drank both potions in quick succession, and

his arms recovered a little after a few minutes. They were far from fine, but he was no longer

bleeding and the pain had dulled to a manageable throb.

“Thank you,” Zorian eventually said. “I would have surely died here without your help. I owe you my

life. If there is anything you need in the future-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zach grumbled, waving him off. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

“Searching for Akoja,” Zorian admitted. “She left the dance a while before the attack and it’s kind of

my fault.”

Zach rubbed his face in frustration. “I see. Well, let’s go find Akoja before she ends up even worse

than you did. Do you know the way?”

They traveled through the burning streets of the city, leaving a trail of dead invaders behind them.

Zach didn’t even try to avoid the monsters, simply plowing through them like an angry god out for

vengeance. At one point they were even attacked by a horde of skeletons and an enemy mage, but

Zach simply made the earth beneath their feet open up and swallow them. Zorian dutifully kept his

mouth shut and never questioned Zach about his seemingly inexhaustible mana reserves or his

knowledge of advanced magic that should be beyond his access level and proficiency, content to

enjoy the benefits of Zach’s skill and talent. Zach had outright saved his life tonight – he was entitled

to his secrets, as far as Zorian was concerned.

Eventually, they found Akoja. She had fled into one of the vacant buildings to escape a pack of

winter wolves chasing after her and barricaded herself in one of the rooms on the upper floor.

She had been very, very lucky. Finding a building whose main door had been bashed in by the war

trolls, long after those war trolls moved over to other targets, just in time for her to take refuge in

there from a pursuing winter wolf pack… well, that whole situation had had the potential to develop

very differently. The wounds on his arms throbbed a little, as if resonating with those dark musings,

sending pangs of pain down his spine.

He shook his head, banishing the thought of Akoja being torn to shreds by the wolf pack. It didn’t

happen and he didn’t want to think about it.

There was no trace of winter wolves around the house at the time Zach and Zorian found the girl,

though. The wolves had clearly been inside the house and tried to get to her – the door behind which

she hid was covered in scratches from wolf claws and frosted over. However, winter wolves were not

really equipped for sieges, and the door was a sturdy thing made from quality oak. The house was

very spacious and well-made in general, made by someone with lots of money to spend.

Alas, while the winter wolves were gone, Akoja was not willing to simply trust them on that claim.

The winter wolves had clearly moved on to other targets, but Akoja was still fearful and refused to

open the door and step outside. It took several minutes of talking to her through the closed door

before Zach and Zorian convinced her it was safe to come out and that staying inside until the city

guards arrive was not a good plan.

Actually, Zorian was not entirely sure why joining Akoja in her improvised shelter and waiting for

things to die down was a bad move at this point. Things were bad out there, but surely the attackers

couldn’t beat the entire Eldemar military, right? The royal forces would eventually restore order. They

just had to survive until that happened.

However, Zach clearly didn’t agree with that sentiment, and Zorian didn’t dare contradict him. Clearly

the other boy knew something Zorian didn’t. He did his best to convince Akoja to come out, and

eventually it worked.

They heard the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor. Akoja had dragged virtually the

entire contents of the room in front of the door to stop the wolves from getting to her if they managed

to break through it, and now it took quite a bit of time and effort to clear the way before she could

come out.

Zorian was certain she would blame him for causing her to leave the safety of the dance hall, so he

was quite surprised when Akoja immediately latched onto him when she finally opened the door,

engulfing him in a strong hug.

Surprised and in pain. This was the worst possible time for someone to squeeze his arms like that.

He screamed in pain involuntarily, causing her to immediately step back in shock.

“Wha…? Zorian, your arms! W-What happened to you!?” Akoja said, sounding horrified.

“It’s…” Zorian hesitated, not quite willing to tell her it’s nothing. She might hug him again if he did.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“I gave him a healing potion,” Zach helpfully added. “He’ll be fine, he’s just being a big baby.”

Zorian gave him an unamused look but didn’t snap at him.

“A winter wolf bit me,” Zorian told Akoja, focusing his attention back to her instead. “It hurts, but I’ll

live.”

“T-Those horrible beasts…” Akoja said fearfully, visibly trembling. Seeing the bite wounds on

Zorian’s arms seemed to remind her of her own experience with the wolf pack.

“Anyway,” Zach said, clapping his hand obnoxiously to snap Akoja out of her terrified daze, “I know

you’re both a little shaken by all this, but it’s best if you continued this conversation back in the

shelters.”

“Shelters?” Akoja asked, confused for a second. “Ah, yes! The academy shelters! But we’re so far

away... how will we get there without being eaten? I really think it would be safer to just hide here

until morning? Surely the owner of the house will understand…”

“Have no fear, the great Zach has a solution,” Zach said with a wide grin, lifting a spell rod of some

sort into the air theatrically. Zorian found it interesting, and also more than a little disturbing, that

Zach could maintain this kind of attitude in the current situation.

His thoughts were interrupted by Zach thrusting the rod towards them.

“Both of you hold on to this and it will teleport you to the shelters,” Zach said, shaking the rod up and

down for emphasis.

“Teleport rod?” Zorian asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” Zach confirmed. “It will teleport anything touching it when it triggers. I’ve set it to a 30 second

delay, so both of you should hold on to it before you’re left behind.”

Zorian and Akoja quickly placed a hand on the rod, but when they did, Zach immediately let go of it

and stepped back.

“Wait, what about you?” Zorian asked in alarm.

“Yes, what are you doing!?” Akoja loudly protested. “You can’t possibly be planning to stay here?

Don’t be an idiot!”

Ah, right. Akoja hadn’t seen Zach fighting the invaders.

“Don’t worry about me. I still have something to do here. I’ll catch up with you in no time,” Zach said,

trying to wave her concerns off. He turned around and started to walk out of the house.

“Zach, this isn’t a game! These things are going to kill you!” Akoja protested, following after him. She

still clutched the teleport rod in her hand as she did, and Zorian didn’t have much choice but to follow

after her if he wanted to hold on to it.

Sadly, Zach ignored her complaints, not even bothering to turn back and look at her as she tried to

catch up to him and shove the rod towards him.

“Look, I’m perfectly capable-” Zach began, just as they stepped through the ruined door of the

house.

Zorian wasn’t sure what tipped him off, exactly – he just got a vague feeling of dread and knew he

had to react immediately. He immediately let go of the teleport rod and slammed his whole body into

Zach, pushing him out of the path of an incoming spell. An angry red ray surged through the air in

front of them, passing right where Zach’s head was only a few moments ago, and hit the wall behind

them. The jagged beam of red light bit deep into the wall, gouging a deep trench in it and shrouding

the area in a cloud of fine dust.

“Crap,” Zach said. “He found me. Quick, hold the rod before-“

Zorian turned towards Akoja, only to see her standing empty-handed behind him. When Zorian let go

of the rod to save Zach, she was left as the sole person holding it. Unfortunately, she either hadn’t

been holding it too tightly or she let go of it in shock, being the rod was currently rolling on the

ground beside her.

A moment later, it winked out of existence, having teleported away to the shelters as it was set up to

do.

“Damn it, you two,” Zach complained. “Why didn’t you hold on!?”

“You’d be dead, then!” Zorian protested. He wasn’t going to let a person who saved his life and

helped him find Akoja die from a stray spell if he could help it. What kind of question was that?

Besides, it was clear Zach was amazingly good combat mage. Just how much trouble… uh…

A sudden gust of air blew the dust away and a gaunt humanoid figure stepped into view. Zorian

actually gasped in surprise as he took in the appearance of the thing in front of them. It was a

skeleton wreathed in sickly green light. Its bones were black with a strange metallic sheen, as if they

were not bones at all, but rather a facsimile of a skeleton made out of some kind of black metal.

Encased in gold-decorated armor, with a scepter held tightly in one of its skeletal hands and a crown

full of purple gemstones, the creature looked like some long-dead king risen from the dead.

It was a lich. It was a thrice-damned lich! Oh, they were so going to die…

The lich swept its empty eye sockets over them. As Zorian’s eyes met the black pits that once held

the lich’s eyes, an uncomfortable feeling washed over him, like the lich was peering into his very

soul. After less than a second, the lich lazily shifted its attention to Akoja, who visibly took a step

back and made a whining sound upon being scrutinized by the creature.

The lich dismissed Akoja just as quickly as it did Zorian, however, and shifted its attention to Zach

instead.

“So…” the lich spoke, its voice resonant with power, “You’re the one that has been killing my

minions.”

“Zorian, Ako… you two run away while I deal with this guy,” Zach said, clutching the staff in his hand.

Without waiting for a response, Zach launched a barrage of magic missiles towards the lich, who

retaliated with a trio of purple beams as it erected an aegis around itself with a single wave of its

bony hand. Two of them were aimed at Zach, but sadly enough the lich saw fit to aim one towards

Zorian’s retreating form. While it failed to hit Zorian directly, the beam’s impact with the nearby

ground created a sizeable explosion that drove stone shrapnel into his legs. The pain was immense,

and Zorian collapsed on the ground in an instant, unable to take a single step further.

Zorian gritted his teeth in pain. The new wounds were horrific, and made his legs almost useless. He

tried to drag himself to safety, but with his arms already hurting and weak, he found it impossible to

do so.

A spell hit the ground to the left of him a moment after, detonating into a massive explosion.

Although the impact was relatively far from him, the force of the blast was strong enough that Zorian

could still feel it as it passed over him.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He blacked out.

- break -

When Zorian regained consciousness, not much time had passed. He knew this because he could

still hear the sounds of Zach and the lich fighting, he was still surrounded by ruined buildings, and

there was Akoja crying over him.

He was no longer in the same spot where he fell. His vision was blurred, but Akoja had clearly

dragged him behind some rubble to shield him from the aftershocks of the spell battle.

He took a deep breath and tried to see if she was injured. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t. He

didn’t think this was because she was better at dodging than him, so that probably meant the lich

hadn’t even bothered to target her in his initial spell barrage.

Why did the lich attack Zorian, but not Akoja? So unfair. Wait, was it because he had pushed Zach

out of the way of that disintegration ray? That move saved Zach’s life and Zorian wasn’t sorry he’d

done it, but it probably made him look like a bigger threat than he actually was.

“Please don’t die…” Akoja said quietly. “Please don’t die. We’re going to live through this. Please

don’t die.”

Zorian didn’t know if she was talking to him or to herself, but he did know that she was being very

stupid and he couldn’t stand it.

“You should go,” he suddenly told her. He was hurting all over, but he could still speak just fine.

“Zorian!” She said happily. She then winced, realizing she was being too loud and might be

attracting attention to their hiding spot. “Thank the gods, I thought-”

“Seriously, you need to go,” Zorian told her. “Zach isn’t going to win this. He’s just buying time for us

to run away, so why haven’t you done so already?”

“I… I’m not strong enough to carry you,” she protested. “It was hard to drag you over here, I don’t

think I could-”

“Forget about me,” Zorian told her. “What am I to you, anyway? We’re just classmates. I ruined your

evening and caused all of this anyway. I’m not going anywhere like this, but you can still make it out

alive. Just go.”

She said nothing, simply shaking her head. She didn’t move.

Before he could say anything else, the sounds of fighting stopped. Zach and the lich were talking

about something, but Zorian was too far away to understand what they were saying. It didn’t help

that his ears were still ringing slightly from the explosion that made him black out.

Suddenly, Zorian completely lost control of his body. Some kind of alien force paralyzed him and

lifted him roughly into the air. Beside him, he could see Akoja being likewise lifted into the air.

A moment later they were both hurtling through the air. After a brief but disorienting flight, Zorian

slammed painfully into Zach, and then Akoja slammed into both of them. The three of them ended

up in a confused pile, hurting all over but very much alive.

“It doesn’t matter if your soul can be reincarnated elsewhere if someone mutilates it beyond

recognition before it gets there,” a voice suddenly said. Zorian couldn’t see anything, as he was

currently squeezed between Zach and Akoja, but he recognized the voice as that of the lich. “After

all, the soul may be immortal, but no one said it cannot be altered or added to.”

Zorian could hear the lich chanting in some strange language that definitely wasn’t standard Ikosian

used in traditional invocations, but any curiosity about this was washed away by a wave of pain and

unidentifiable wrongness that suddenly slammed into him. He opened his mouth to scream but then

his world suddenly erupted into bright light before going completely black.

- break -

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body

convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace

of drowsiness in his mind.

“Good morning, brother!” an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. “Morning,

morning, MORNING!!!”

- break -

By the time Zorian arrived to Cyoria, it was becoming impossible to deny what had happened.

Somehow, he had gone back in time and was currently relieving the month leading up to the

summer festival. The whole thing was crazy and unbelievable, but there was no way this was an

illusion.

The whole thing was most likely related to Zach. Thus, Zorian was both dreading and looking

forward to meeting Zach on the first day of classes. He didn’t know how to confront his classmate

about what was happening, but he had to try.

However, there was a complication. When he approached his classroom, he found Akoja standing

there uneasily with her clipboard clutched tightly in front of her. The moment she saw him, her eyes

widened and she seized him by the arm before dragging him off to an empty corridor.

“Zorian, please tell me I’m not crazy,” She asked him urgently.

“Crazy?” he asked.

“The summer festival. The burning city. The lich. The… everything,” she said, growing every more

agitated as she went on. “We lived through this entire month already, and no one but me seems to

remember it. But you remember, right? R-right? I mean, you were there when the lich…”

Zorian rubbed his forehead. Truthfully, this was not entirely unexpected. Zorian already suspected

that last spell the lich had cast on the three of them had sometimes caused this. It made sense that

Akoja got caught up in the whole thing too, since she was also a target.

Akoja seemed to wilt at his silence, taking it as a bad sign, so he decided to reassure her.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Yeah, I remember.”

“You do? Thank the gods. I knew I wasn’t crazy,” Akoja said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know

what I’d do if you also couldn’t remember.”

“Is Zach here?” Zorian asked.

“No,” she shook her head fiercely. “I also want to talk to him.”

An uncomfortable silence followed for a few seconds.

“Anyway, you need to help me talk to Ilsa when she gets here,” Akoja suddenly said. “With both of

us saying the same thing, she is going to have to-”

“Err, Ako? I don’t think random telling people about this is a good idea,” Zorian said hurriedly. “All of

this sounds completely crazy, and if we try to prove it, we could end up imprisoned by the

government.”

“You can’t be serious,” Akoja told him. “Zorian, this is far too important to keep to ourselves.

Especially for such a selfish and paranoid reason – so what if we’re imprisoned and questioned,

we’ve got nothing to hide.”

Zorian swallowed heavily, suddenly getting fearful of Akoja. Although a part of him was glad he

wasn’t alone in this, he found Akoja’s reasoning highly disturbing.

“Ako, please, listen to me…” he said hesitantly. “I’m not saying we do nothing while the city burns,

but we need to do this carefully. Can you at least wait for a few days until we have a better picture of

what’s happening?”

“B-besides…” Akoja said, refusing to look him in the eye. “I already told Ilsa and some other people.

They didn’t believe me, which is why I was so glad you remember things. You can back me up and

people can stop saying I’m doing it all for attention.”

Zorian’s unease ratcheted up.

“You… already told Ilsa?” Zorian said, more as a shocked statement to himself rather than a serious

question. “And others? What others?”

“My parents,” Akoja said, biting her lip. “A bunch of Cyoria policemen when I visited one of the local

stations. Some of our classmates.”

Zorian took off his glasses with one hand and started massaging his face with the other.

He really wished someone else got caught up in that spell…

Chapter 001-B

Abyss of Time

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body

convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace

of drowsiness in his mind.

“Good morning, brother!” an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. “Morning,

morning, MORNING!!!”

For a moment, Zorian was confused about what was happening. However, that moment was very

brief. After all, Zorian had gone through this experience many, many times.

He sent a quick telepathic command to Kirielle and she immediately slumped unconscious across

his chest. He pushed her off of him and rose to his feet in a single fluid motion, and then proceeded

to walk out of the door without bothering to get dressed or put on his glasses.

His hands were going through a variety of gestures even as he started descending down the stairs.

The first restart was always the most annoying one. His current body and soul were deeply flawed,

incapable of supporting the full breadth of his magical skills and thought. His first priority after every

full restart was to reactivate his mental enhancements.

“Zorian, what are you-”

Mother couldn’t even finish her question before she also slumped unconscious. Zorian never even

glanced in her direction, opting to simply keep descending down the stairs in his pajamas while

casting spells. His thoughts and awareness shifted and expanded with every passing second as the

mental enhancements snapped into place – automated calculation spells constantly informed him

about distances and measurements in his environment, sensory filters blocked out distractions and

drew his attention to details he might have otherwise missed, and irrelevant thoughts were severed

and suppressed.

After a while, he stopped. He wasn’t done modifying things, but there was only so much he could do

right now. It would take many, many restarts before he truly restored his peak capabilities.

But no matter – he had time. A vast, possibly infinite amount of time.

He created a simulacrum. The process was simple and quick. The moment the copy had popped

into existence, Zorian’s mind reached out to it and started attaching it into his overself. This he had

learned from the cephalic rats a long time ago, and then refined further with examples from other

collective organisms. The copy didn’t resist the integration and remained silent throughout the whole

process.

Once both of their minds were connected into a unified whole, they turned around in opposite

directions and started salvaging everything of value from the house. Daimen’s old room was

particularly important. It still contained a number of valuable materials and magic items. Zorian and

his simulacrums gathered everything that was useful and piled them up in the kitchen to be

processed and disassembled for crafting materials.

If he wanted to maintain the overself with his simulacrum over great distances, he needed a way for

them to remain in contact. Once he would have been forced to maintain a network of permanent

gates and telepathic relays to achieve that. But that was a long time ago, and he now had more

convenient and inconspicuous methods available. Mostly he just used a micro-gate stabilized inside

a small icosahedron as his method of contact. They were small enough to be turned into amulets

and key chains, allowing him and his simulacrums to carry them on their person at all times.

Zorian and his simulacrum quickly made a pair of gate amulets. The materials they were working

with weren’t good, so the end product was unstable. The micro-gates contained within the

icosahedrons would destabilize within eight hours or so, but that was enough for Zorian’s purposes.

Each of them claimed one of the amulets and then silently got up from the table. The simulacrum

telekinetically picked up Mother from where she was slumped on the floor and took her to her room.

As for Zorian, he waved his hand once, turning the leftover scrap from their crafting into fine dust. He

then waved his other hand, and blowing the dust away and straight into a nearby trashcan.

He then walked over to the front door and opened it. Ilsa, who was just about to knock on the door,

stared at him in surprise.

Zorian immediately broke into her mind, too subtly for her to notice, and started monitoring her

thoughts. He couldn’t help it – it was practically instinct at this point. Unless people specifically took

steps to stop it, Zorian automatically spied on the thoughts of everyone around him, and he was

good enough at it that people rarely noticed.

Ilsa’s mind told him he was still in his pajamas, and that it was kind of inappropriate to greet your

teacher dressed like that. Oops.

He quickly made a handful of gestures and then pressed his palms against his chest. A wave of light

washed over his body, restructuring the fabric of the pajamas into more appropriate clothes.

“What? How did you do that?” Ilsa asked, shocked.

Instead of answering, Zorian deleted the last few seconds of memory from her mind. She suddenly

frowned, trying to make sense of her sudden mental stutter.

“Come in, Miss Zileti,” Zorian invited politely.

“Of course,” she nodded, stepping inside.

Zorian felt his simulacrum disappear from the house, having teleported away after tucking Mother

under the covers of her bed.

“Are you alone in the house?” Ilsa asked, frowning.

“No, but Mother didn’t feel well this morning and went back to sleep,” Zorian told her.

“I see. I hope she gets better soon,” Ilsa said politely. She glanced curiously at the icosahedron

hanging from his neck but didn’t say anything about it. “We shouldn’t disturb her then. I will erect a

privacy ward so we can talk without bothering her with noise. Where do you want to talk?”

“We can talk in the kitchen,” Zorian said, pointing at the table behind him. “By the way, do you mind

if I ask you a strange question?”

“It really depends on what the question is,” Ilsa said with a small smile.

“What would you do if you had an endless amount of time and no one to share it with?” Zorian asked

her seriously, sitting down next to the kitchen table. He noticed he missed some of the dust when he

was cleaning up and simply pushed it onto the floor.

“What?” Ilsa laughed. “What do you mean, Mister Kazinski? Are you asking me what I’d do if I was

immortal?”

“Yes. You have an eternity to hone your skills, research mysteries, and enjoy material possessions.

However, all the people are gone. They have been replaced by shadows,” Zorian explained, staring

directly into her eyes as he spoke. “What would you do?”

Ilsa sighed at him.

“Mister Kazinski,” she began. “Everyone feels a little disconnected from the world around them at

your age. I know you probably think no one can understand you, but we’ve all been through this at

one point in our lives. Now please… let’s just get the formal stuff out of the way, and we can discuss

philosophical musings afterwards.”

“Sure,” Zorian agreed easily. He knew she would never bring this topic up again, today or in the

future, but no frustration or disappointment arose in his mind.

Truthfully, it was pretty pointless of him to bring up the topic to begin with. He already knew what the

response would be, because he had tried this at least twelve times before. It was just something he

did out of habit.

A small, nearly forgotten part of him felt he was turning into something of a shadow himself.

One of the mental adjustments he had done earlier quickly crushed that thought as pointless

defeatism, and he continued pretending he was paying attention to Ilsa’s explanations, his thoughts

turning tranquil once more.

- break -

While Zorian’s main body was dealing with Ilsa, his simulacrum body was walking up a small hill in

rural Eldemar. Both the original and the simulacrum were still aware of each other, maintaining

contact through the gate amulets hanging from their neck. There would be no need for reports or

memory packet exchanges after this – his greater self was aware of everything the simulacrum was

doing, and was committing his actions to memory as if they were his own.

Eventually, he reached the top of the hill. There was a Bakora gate standing there, surrounded by a

remains of small research camp. Zorian ignored the camp remains, as they contained nothing

useful, and placed his hand on the bars of the icosahedron.

He still didn’t understand how the Bakora gate network worked. Despite the multiple greater restarts

he had spent studying gate magic, he couldn’t produce anything remotely similar to what was in front

of him. He really wondered who the Bakora were.

Still, he hadn’t come here to research the Bakora gate, but to use it. As such, he concentrated and

started casting a spell to contact the gate spirit – a complicated variant of the manifold resonance

spell that allowed him to connect to the normally isolated entity.

Like everything else about the Bakora gates, the gate spirit was strange. Zorian wasn’t sure what it

was, but it definitely wasn’t a spirit from the spiritual planes bound into an object. It did not seem to

resent its duty, it had infinite patience, and generally acted as a machine more than a living being.

Some kind of soul mechanism, maybe? Was it even possible to assemble a machine out of soul

material? He didn’t understand souls enough, but his gut feeling was yes. For all he knew, souls

could be spiritual machines to begin with.

In any case, Zorian had gotten pretty good at learning how to interact with the gate spirits. He

ordered the gate spirit to open a passage to a gate in Koth, and it immediately complied.

The moment he stepped through the gate, he began teleporting towards the forgotten sinkhole

where the imperial orb was located.

- break -

Zorian stepped off the train, glanced at the Cyoria’s main train station for a bit to orient himself, and

then started walking in a random direction.

He had no real destination. Much like there was no real point for him to ride a train to Cyoria, there

was no real point to him physically walking anywhere. The gate amulet he was wearing didn’t play

well with teleportation magic, but he was so good at dimensionalism at this point that he could

teleport freely anyway. However, what would be the point? He wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere.

There was no end to this.

The train station was packed with people, and a constant stream of new minds kept entering and

leaving his perception as he walked. He invaded their mind automatically as they entered his

telepathic radius, some of his mental enhancements automatically assessing their thoughts for

threats and interesting tidbits. It all blended together after a while, in all honesty. Just shadow people

thinking shadow thoughts, over and over again.

Once upon a time, Zorian had moral compunctions about invading people’s minds without

permission. He tried to limit himself and be mindful of common courtesy and ethics. A part of him felt

nostalgic for those times, wanting to return to his younger, more innocent self. Alas, that was

impossible. A mind, once expanded, cannot return to its simpler origins. Zorian had even invaded

the minds of Kirielle and his parents, searching through their deepest memories. What sanctity could

the surface thoughts of strangers possibly hold for him?

As he walked, he began cycling through a variety of gestures, mumbling chants under his breath.

People around him gave him strange looks, but didn’t say anything – they just put some distance

between him and themselves and went on their way. He was interacting with his marker, fixing some

of the damage it suffered when it was transplanted from Zach to Zorian, while simultaneously editing

some parts of it to be more to his liking.

There was a very real danger of rendering the marker inoperable when doing this kind of tampering,

but Zorian hardly cared about that. Even if he was erased out of this particular time loop, he would

just wake up back in Cirin and start things all over again. And considering this was the very first loop,

this was arguably the best time to edit the marker like this.

He didn’t bother going to the academy to sleep in his room. A some point the rain began to fall, but

the raindrops couldn’t touch him. They swerved out of his way as they fell near him, as if afraid of

touching him. He kept walking through the entire night, tinkering with his marker and occasionally

forming animal shapes from the raindrops around him. Eventually he made it to the outskirts of

Cyoria, where he was stopped by guards.

They didn’t find him suspicious, they were just disturbed that a young teenager was out in the

pouring rain, in the dead of the night, planning to leave the city. They kept asking him if he was

alright and insisting they would take him home. Zorian rarely got upset about anything these days,

but somehow these two guards really managed to get under his skin with their attempt to help. He

mind-wiped them and left the city behind him.

He didn’t need concern from a couple of shadows.

Eventually he found himself in front of a small mansion not that far from the city. This was where

Tesen Zveri, Zach’s official caretaker, kept Zach’s unconscious body while he was incapacitated by

the lich’s spell in the first few restarts of every time loop. Apparently Tesen was afraid people would

think he was responsible for Zach’s condition, as there was no obvious perpetrator and Tesen had a

pretty good motive to get rid of Zach as far as most people were concerned, so every time he found

Zach unconscious due to soul damage, he had him moved to this secret location while he

investigated the thing and decided what to do. The investigation into Zach’s whereabouts was a total

sham, since Tesen knew exactly where Zach was located.

The place had guards. Eight of them, in fact. However, they were picked more for their loyalty and

willingness to not ask questions, rather than skill. The mansion wasn’t especially well-warded, either.

Tesen was mostly relying on obscurity to keep this place secret. Zorian had no problems breaking

into the mansion, after which he quickly disabled all the guards stationed there.

Once the place was secure, he went through each of the guards one by one, editing their memories,

placing mental compulsions, and otherwise changing their minds into something more useful for his

purposes. Once they woke up, he ordered them to go out in the city and buy a bunch of alchemical

materials using their own money and bring them back to the mansion. They didn’t like this one bit,

especially since Zorian instructed them to use up their savings and pawn off anything valuable from

their own homes in order to get more cash, but then again, they didn’t have much of a choice.

Once they were gone, he dragged a chair from the kitchen so he could sit next to Zach’s bed. His

fellow time traveler was unconscious from the aftereffects of soul damage, and would remain so for

at least seven or eight more restarts. It was actually a bit unpredictable when Zach would wake up

from his coma, Zorian had found.

After scanning the boy for a few minutes, Zorian created two more simulacrums and they all got to

work speeding up Zach’s recovery.

Healing soul damage quickly was impossible. Even after spending centuries researching the topic,

the best he could do was accelerate the soul’s natural recovery process through potions. He would

have to wait for the guards to return before he could make those.

However, the damage done to Zach’s soul was not too extensive. He was unconscious mostly

because his damaged soul had damaged his body when it had been shoved into his body at the

start of the restart, and now he was too injured to wake up. The damage caused by soul damage

was subtle and hard to deal with, but Zorian was an expert in medical magic with centuries of

experience. With him and his two simulacrums working on the issue, it only took half an hour to fix

Zach up.

He could have woken the boy up at the point, but didn’t. He wanted to give Zach soul recover

potions the moment he regained consciousness, and those weren’t even made yet. Instead he went

the most spacious room in the mansion and started creating a work space for himself, consuming

the fancy furniture in order to make some sturdy tables and throwing out everything else that was

taking up space.

Halfway through this process, another simulacrum teleported into the room. It was the simulacrum

he had sent to Koth to retrieve the imperial orb. The simulacrum wordlessly dumped an entire bag

worth of contents on a nearby table Zorian created. The imperial orb was there, as was a bunch of

other divine artifacts the simulacrum had stolen from various places as it made its way back. There

was a small bronze pyramid there, a black knife with a wavy pattern on the blade, a gem-encrusted

box, and a small figurine of a goat made out of white marble. All of these were brought here for one

simple purpose: to be taken apart for raw ingredients.

Divine magic, much like the inner mechanics of souls and the truth behind Bakora gates, were still a

major mystery for Zorian. He couldn’t cast divine magic, but he could detect it. With some effort and

a lot of trial and error, he was able to map out the internal workings of some divine artifacts and

figure out how to crudely modify them. It involved breaking the artifacts and their corresponding

divine magic mechanisms, and then combining some of the pieces into a new design.

It was akin to taking apart a train in order to make a really good horse-drawn chariot. A train

engineer would be horrified at waste, but if you had no other way to get yourself a chariot that good,

it might make sense to do so.

The chariot Zorian wanted was the memory bank function of the imperial orb. It allowed the user of

the orb to store a basically infinite amount of information, and that information persisted across

restarts. Although it was a function of the orb, the memory bank was fairly self-contained in its

function, and it was possible to rip it out of the orb and attach it to something else. Your soul, for

instance. For anyone else, that would be a pointless waste of a perfectly good divine artifact, but for

Zorian, it was priceless.

The other divine artifacts were just there to make this transfer possible. The knife was needed

because it could damage other divine artifacts. The bronze pyramid and the marble goat contained

pieces of divine magic that he needed to add to the memory bank in order to let it stick to his soul

better. The box could hold and stabilize the pieces of divine magic inside it, giving Zorian enough

time to cobble his makeshift divine magic out of the divine artifact remains.

Before he could start the crafting process, however, he sensed Zach getting out of bed and making

his way towards him.

Huh. Zorian didn’t expect him to get up for another three hours, at least.

He simulacrums quickly left the house to go gather some more materials needed to speed up Zach’s

recovery, while Zorian himself remained in the work room, making further preparations for the

transfer of the memory bank.

Zach stumbled into the work room before stopping to check up the situation. He looked surprised to

see Zorian there, and for a while he said nothing, slowly taking in the sights and rubbing his eyes to

lessen the raging headache he was no doubt having.

“Zorian?” Zach asked uncertainly.

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed. “It’s certainly me.”

“What… where are we?” Zach asked, his eyes taking in the room around him again.

“A countryside mansion on the outskirts of Cyoria. When Tesen found you unconscious from soul

damage, he hid you away here so he could pretend you went missing,” Zorian explained. He knew

this explanation would mean nothing to Zach, and would only create more questions, but it was

impossible to explain what happened in a truly concise manner.

And besides, it was funnier to explain things this way.

“I… see…” Zach said slowly. “Do you mind if I take a seat? My head won’t stop spinning.”

“Help yourself,” Zorian told him, gesturing to the chair that had been occupied by one of his

simulacrums not too long ago. Zorian himself barely glanced at Zach, opting to instead flip the

bronze pyramid in one hand while holding the black knife in the other. He was wondering where to

make the cut when the moment came. Even now, messing with divine magic like this was full of

uncertainties, and he couldn’t guarantee he would be successful. “I sent the guard to get me some

materials for soul recovery potions, so don’t be alarmed when they start coming back.”

Zach gave him a strange look.

“Soul recovery potions… you can make those?” Zach asked slowly.

“The time loop has taught me many things,” Zorian replied casually.

“You know about the t- ow.” Zach jumped to his feet in shock, then winced as his head protested the

sudden movement. “Ow. Damn it, what did that pile of bones do to me? I feel terrible.”

“Soul damage is no joke,” Zorian told him. “I’m afraid it will be several restarts before you fully

recover.”

“You do!” Zach exclaimed excitedly. “You do remember what happened before! Man, that is…” he

suddenly halted, frowning. “But wait. Since when did you become aware of the restarts? You sound

so casual about it, and you’re making complicated potions and… is this entire room made with

alteration?”

“Yes,” Zorian confirmed, putting knife and the bronze pyramid aside for now so he could focus fully

on Zach. “I restructured all the luxury furniture into something more useful. Tesen will no doubt be

furious when he finds out, but then again… it’s not like either of us care about that man, right?”

“That… that isn’t the skill of Zorian I know,” Zach said, sounding horrified. “How long was I out?

Don’t tell me I was sleeping for years!?”

“No, just a few months,” Zorian assured him.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Zach said, exhaling heavily.

Zorian couldn’t help it. He laughed.

“What?” Zach demanded.

“Why are you so relieved? Even if you were incapacitated for years, why does it matter? There is no

getting off this wild ride. A few years here and there are irrelevant. You and me are here forever,”

Zorian told him, mirth obvious in his voice.

“Don’t say that!” Zach told him. “There is a way out of here, I know it. We just…” He suddenly

hesitated.

“We just have to stop the invasion?” Zorian finished for him, his smile widening.

The two of them kept staring at each other for a few seconds. Zach’s face was full of confusion,

whereas Zorian initially looked cheerful but then gradually relaxed into an unreadable expression.

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” Zorian told him honestly, turning away from him in order to start

carving glyphs into the surface of a nearby wooden board. “You, Jornak, and Quatach-Ichl are the

only people I can truly talk to, and Jornak is honestly crazier than me in some ways.”

Which was quite an achievement, in Zorian’s opinion. Jornak had only been looking for a fraction of

the time Zorian was. How did he get so bad in less than a hundred years?

He really wished Quatach-Ichl was also a looper. The ancient lich was a brutal opponent, but he was

also surprisingly nice and insightful once you got to know him.

“I don’t understand,” Zach complained. “What the hell happened to you, Zorian?”

“It’s nothing,” Zorian tried to wave him off. He continued to carve glyphs, his mind constantly

generating complicated spell formula blueprints in his head and supplying his with ideas. He rarely

bothered with fixed designs anymore, preferring to adopt designs on the fly based on available

materials and current needs. “Just relentless weathering of time, as our dear angelic friends would

say. I’ve been doing this for way too long.”

“You said I was only out for a few months,” Zach said, frowning. “Stop being deliberately mysterious

and start explaining things or I’ll punch you in the face. Don’t think a simple headache will stop me.”

“There is a second-order time loop,” Zorian told him bluntly. “Whenever we manage to escape the

time loop, we are simply flung back at the beginning of the time loop. Well, the beginning of the time

loop for me. Unlike this time loop, the second-order time loop seems centered on me instead.”

“What? But… I don’t remember…” Zach trained off. “Zorian, stop carving those stupid glyphs for a

second and look at me when I’m talking to you! Are you saying there are parts of the time loop your

remember, but I don’t?”

Zorian halted his work for a second, and then sighed. He threw the knife aside and looked at Zach

again.

“I know you understand what I’m telling you, you just don’t want to accept it,” Zorian told him. “We

lived through this entire time loop. We escaped. When the month was done, we were back here

again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”

“Why don’t I remember then?” Zach demanded.

“People need to escape the current time loop cycle in order to retain their soul and memories in the

next one,” Zorian told him.

Unless those people are Zorian. Zorian would still end up flung back to the start of time loop, even if

he refused to leave the time loop or flat out got ejected from it. He had completely erased his own

marker multiple times, and it didn’t help.

“Anyway, since you didn’t exit the time loop, your memories didn’t transfer over to this cycle,” Zorian

continued. “To you, this version of the time loop is everything. As for me, I have lived through this a

great many times.” His eyes glazed as select few memories came flooding back. “A great… many

times.”

“What happened to me?” Zach asked in surprise. “I mean, I’m not saying I’m invincible or anything

but it’s still… I don’t know, I just don’t think I would lose, okay?”

“You didn’t lose,” Zorian told him. “You just didn’t want to do this anymore. It was your twelfth time

loop and you were sick of it all.”

There was a second of silence as Zach silently processed that.

“Hey… you aren’t seriously suggesting I just gave up?” Zach demanded.

Zorian was silent for a few seconds, thinking about something. Eventually, he released a small sigh.

“At the end, your old self made me promise I would keep all this this secret from you. That I would let

you experience the time loop ‘normally’ without this pointless burden,” Zorian told him. “As you can

see, I am a liar and a cheat, and I made a mockery out of that promise immediately. In fact, I never

intended to honor that promise to begin with.”

“That’s such a stupid thing to demand of someone!” Zach exclaimed. “I don’t know anything about

this ‘old self’ of mine, and to be honest I’m still leaning towards you playing some kind of trick on me.

But assuming this is all true… I’m glad you broke it. I wouldn’t have honored that promise if I was in

your place, either.”

Zorian said nothing.

“We’re in this together, you hear me?” Zach assured him. “You and me are going to get to the

bottom of this, no matter how long it takes. I don’t know about my previous self’s reasons, but I’m

never going to quit on you.”

Zorian smiled at him sadly.

That was what the old Zach had told him too.

Chapter 055-B

Predator

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body

convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace

of drowsiness in his mind.

He reacted instantly, his body twisting and moving on its own with supernatural fluidity and precision.

The heavy object that fell on him was bounced back into the air with a surprised squeal while Zorian

simultaneously rolled off the bed. He landed on his feet and smoothly righted himself into a standing

position, looking down at the intruder with a stony expression.

“Um,” Kirielle fumbled, sprawled on his bed in an awkward position and probably trying to

comprehend what just happened. “Good morning, brother?”

“Good morning, Kiri,” Zorian told her politely. He wasn’t actually angry at her for waking him up like

that. His reaction was simply instinctive.

He then continued to stare at her silently.

“Um,” Kirielle said, uncomfortably. “Mom said to wake you up.”

“That is good,” Zorian told her. “As you can see, I am very awake.”

He continued to stare.

Kirielle stared back at him for a second before righting herself into a sitting position on the edge of

the bed. She gave him a big grin as she started swinging her legs back and forth.

“So…” she began excitedly, “are you excited?”

“About what? Going back to the academy?” Zorian asked her blandly.”

“Yeah!”

“Of course I am,” Zorian confirmed. “Do you want to come with me to Cyoria?”

Kirielle’s legs froze mid swing and her eyes widened slightly. She stared at him uncertainly for a full

second.

He stared back at her, silent and still, not elaborating anything.

“R-Really?” she asked, hope and disbelief radiating off of her. “Why would-”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Yes or no?” Zorian prompted.

He knew his current approach was extremely crude and uncharacteristic for him, but he was no

longer the same person he once was and he preferred to tackle problems head-on if he could help it.

And he knew that Kirielle would ultimately not look too deeply into his reasons, due to plenty of

previous experience.

“Yes! Definitely yes!” Kirielle said loudly. Then she frowned. “I’m just… how did you even know? Did

you eavesdrop on me and Mother or something?”

“You of all people have no right to judge others for eavesdropping,” Zorian told her. Let her draw her

own conclusions from his misleading words.

“What? What do you mean-”

He turned around and left the room to use the bathroom before she could finish her response.

- break -

Zorian stared at the bowl of porridge in front of him, an unhappy frown on his face. It was already

cold, and porridge hadn’t been something he liked very much even before the restart, but that wasn’t

why he was hesitating. Ever since his change, he found his tastes in food to be vastly different than

they had been in the past.

He didn’t like dead food like this. He longed for something living. Something he could personally kill

and fink his teeth into. Something vibrant in life and magic, that glowed to his new senses and made

him hungry…

“Zorian…” his mother asked slowly, studying his face intently, “is there something wrong with the

porridge I made you?”

If this was old Zorian, he would have sighed here, probably. A big, dramatic sigh. He used to be very

fond of those. Alas, his new instincts were to stand completely still and silent most of the time. He

knew it tended to disturb people, but it was hard to resist.

“There is nothing wrong,” Zorian eventually told her after a second of silence. Eating fresh prey raw

was not healthy for human beings anyway, regardless of his new cravings. “I’m just not feeling

hungry at the moment.”

He should count himself lucky that humans didn’t register as prey.

Not innately magical enough.

“Kirielle tells me that you offered to take her with you to Cyoria,” Mother remarked.

“I did,” Zorian confirmed. He pushed the porridge bowl to the side, ignoring the slight frown on

Mother’s face as he did so. “She wants to go, I want to take her. Simple to resolve.”

“She can be quite the handful, you know?” Mother remarked.

“Mom!” Kirielle protested from the other room. She had been ‘stealthily’ eavesdropping on the entire

conversation all this time, of course.

Zorian didn’t say anything. He simply turned his head and gave mother a long, blank look.

Mother waited for a few seconds, apparently expecting him to say something, before raising her

eyebrows at him.

“Zorian, are you alright? You’re acting quite strangely today,” Mother told him. She sounded

genuinely worried.

“I am fine,” Zorian said. He just hadn’t thought her comment merited a response. “Just lost in

thought.”

She sighed. “You really need stop daydreaming so much and come down to earth a little. Especially

since you’ll be taking care of your little sister from now on, too. When I was your age I…”

He tuned her out, pretending to listen in silence until he felt Ilsa arrive not far from their home.

And he really did feel her. Even though she teleported some distance from the house itself, her

magical entrance was like a miniature beacon of magic to his senses. His new senses were

incredibly sharp and discerning, and Zorian had enough experience with different types of magic to

immediately recognize a teleportation even when it occurred in his general vicinity.

It never occurred to him until now, but why was Ilsa even able to teleport to Cirin so easily? And not

far from their house, too. That meant she had been here before in the past, didn’t it?

Probably Daimen related.

“Zorian, are you even listening to me?” Mother suddenly demanded.

“Someone is coming,” Zorian simply coming.

“What do you-”

There was a knock on the door.

“See?” Zorian told her. “It’s probably someone from the Academy. I’ll go open the door.”

He knew he was acting very suspiciously, but he didn’t care. He had done this several times before,

and he knew it would all work out in the end.

- break -

Zorian walked the streets of Cyoria with Kirielle skipping happily beside him. Rain was pouring, but

thanks to a transparent barrier of force Zorian had erected around them, they were mostly dry.

‘Mostly’, because Kirielle insisted on periodically testing the barrier by sticking her hands and feet

outside it, spraying water onto Zorian in the process. Sometimes unintentionally, and sometimes

very clearly intentionally.

He didn’t react either way. It was just water. It couldn’t hurt him in any way. Even most bullets

couldn’t hurt him now, nevermind some rain.

“Zorian, are you sure you’re alright?” Kirielle suddenly asked him. “You’ve been quiet and weird all

day. What are you worried about? Are you secretly doing badly at your school?”

“I don’t think it’s possible for me to keep something like that a secret from Father and Mother,

considering what’s going on with Fortov,” said Zorian shaking his head. “When they went to talk to

the Academy about our older brother’s failures, they would have surely inquired about me as well,

don’t you think?”

“Oh yeah,” she agreed. “But then, what’s up?”

“I’m just thinking,” he told her. “I have lots of things on my mind right now.”

“Like what?” Kirielle challenged.

Like being trapped in a steadily decaying copy of the real world? Struggling to stay sane in an

endlessly repeating existence? Trying to come to terms with his new instincts and urges and

wondering how much of him was really Zorian at this point?

But no, he shouldn’t say that. Despite his newfound fondness for bluntness and direct approach, he

didn’t want to hurt Kirielle. Unlike many other people she would likely accept the truth of the situation

if he insisted it was true, but what would that accomplish? She couldn’t help him, and would only

worry needlessly.

His other self had no special fondness for the concept of siblings, but he was still Zorian, and Zorian

cared for his little sister.

He small part of him wondered for how long that would stay true. But surely… surely there was a

limit to how much he could change? Yes, there was a wide gulf between what Zorian was before and

after the transformation, but wasn’t the same true of Zorian before and after the time loop? His

changes made sense.

No matter what, he was still a person, and not a mindless beast.

“I’m just wondering what to do with myself once I graduate,” Zorian told her vaguely. “I thought I

wanted to be a magic item crafter when I was done with the academy, but that doesn’t look that

appealing anymore. So I am a bit lost.”

It wasn’t even a lie. Zorian was a bit lost about what to do with himself once he got out of the time

loop. But then again, this was true for the old Zorian as well. So it wasn’t like the transformation

changed much in this regard.

Kirielle didn’t seem to think much about his answer, but she didn’t press him. They kept walking

towards Imaya’s place, rain pouring onto his protective rain dome.

The city glowed to his senses, a riot of colors and sensations. Not literally, of course. Rather, his

composite magical sense was picking up signals from various ward schemes used by building

around them, weaving them into an illusory web of sensations that his mind automatically overlayed

on top of what his eyes were telling him. Cyoria was rather unique in this regard, since every second

house seemed to have at least rudimentary warding scheme protecting the place – a luxury most

places couldn’t afford.

Zorian liked magic. He always did, but his other half amplified this fondness several-fold. A place this

awash in magic, crisscrossed by complex magical signatures like this, was instinctually and

viscerally pleasing. A good place to set up a home. A good hunting ground.

His thoughts suddenly turned, as they often did these days, to food. Something living and struggling.

A worthy hunt he could sink his fangs into and drink deeply from until he had his fill…

Maybe he should have eaten that porridge before leaving Cirin, despite his distaste. He really was

getting kind of hungry here.

- break -

After he and Kirielle settled down a little at Imaya’s place, he left the house to seek out Zach. His

fellow time traveler was not all that eager to hang out with him these days – not that Zorian blamed

him much – but they still had a common enemy and goal to work towards.

He found Zach drinking alcohol in some outdoor bar on the outskirts of Cyoria. He wordlessly

approached Zach and sat down at the same table.

He then silently stared at the other boy, not moving or even twitching, waiting for Zach to reach. He

knew the other boy noticed him long before he approached.

Zach gave him a strange, pitying look before downing his entire mug in one gulp and smacking his

lips a few times. He then twiddled his thumbs for a few seconds.

Zorian just continued staring until Zach lost his patience.

“Are you really just going to stare at me like that until I say something?” Zach soon snapped. “Gods,

Zorian. I really wish I had stopped you when you set up that shifter ritual. What the hell were we

thinking?”

“I’m sorry this bothers you so much, Zach. But I don’t want to go back to the way I used to be,”

Zorian told him, not a hint of anger or annoyance in his voice. “There are some issues, but I’m better

like this.”

“There are some issues, he says,” Zach muttered. “Not that you could turn back the clock and undue

the ritual, even if you wanted to.”

“True,” Zorian agreed. He and his other self were one now – two halves of the same soul. He wasn’t

a giant salamander, that he could be sliced into two halves and have one or both halves still live.

“Why did you even go for it?” Zach asked. Pleaded, maybe? He looked tired. “Looking back at it, it’s

so unlike you. You’re a paranoid jerk, and you always overthink everything. It’s the most annoying,

and most praiseworthy part of you. You… you must have known.”

Zorian was quiet for a moment, and this time it wasn’t because he thought no response was

necessary.

“Fear,” Zorian eventually told him. “The task in front of us seemed so monumental. So much larger

than either of us, but especially me. All I have is a mild talent for mind magic, and in the end I

couldn’t even fix the matriarch’s memory package before it unraveled and disappeared from my

mind. How could we ever do this, and how could I meaningfully contribute? I needed to be better.

And now I am.”

“Damn it Zorian… I...” Zach began, before falling silent.

“Don’t be like that,” Zorian told him. “I’m not dying, not suffering. In fact, I feel better than ever. Old

Zorian worried too much. Me? I know we will eventually escape this time loop thing. My skin turns

spells and bullets alike, and my eyes see layers of reality I was previously blind to. I am mighty and I

will win. Really, I just wish my tastes in food are not so out of line with what my body can handle.”

“No eating people,” Zach warned.

“You keep telling me this, but I tell you, humans are bad eating,” Zorian told him.

Aranea, however, were a different story. They were just magical enough that his instincts saw them

as a ‘maybe’. It was really complicating his relations to the telepathic arachnids. It was hard to talk to

a psychic and hide that you find them potentially delicious.

He wondered what would happen if he showed up in an aranean colony in his alternate form and

tried to talk to them. They’d probably flee in terror when they realized what they were dealing with,

but it could be an amusing thing to try regardless.

“Anyway, I don’t want to discuss this further,” Zorian told him. “Let’s do something fun instead of

discussing heavy topics like this. Let’s go attack some invaders and cultists.”

“Hmm. Okay,” Zach nodded, rising to his feet. He smiled at him uncertainly. “This, at least, is

something I really like about the new you. You have a spirit for adventure that you just didn’t have

before.”

Zorian smiled back at him. A genuine smile, which were a rarity for him after his transformation.

Finally, a hunt…

Strangely, his smile seem to disturb Zach. Really, some people you could never make happy.

- break -

In the tunnels below Cyoria, an Ibasan patrol was having a bad time. They were used to fighting off a

aranea assassins, or an occasional group of dungeon denizens, but they were a big group

accompanied by war trolls and other dominated monsters, and the dungeon wasn’t that dangerous

on their patrol route. Thus, when they were suddenly attacked by a pair of disguised human

attackers, they struggled to respond effectively.

But even if their response was chaotic and disorganized, they did respond nonetheless.

Zorian studied the group in front of him for notable weak spots, casually side-stepping the wild sword

swings of the war troll next to him. The war troll was large and intimidating, screaming unintelligible

war cries as he swung a sword almost as tall as Zorian, but it was all useless. Zorian didn’t even

have to erect any defenses – the war troll was too slow, his movements trivial to predict.

And so were most enemy projectiles. Three spells were flying at him – two force spears glowing with

red light and a fast-moving stone sphere – but he didn’t try to shield himself, teleport away, or negate

the attacks. Instead, he simply twisted his body and jumped from side to side, expertly weaving

through the spell fire without the need to expend much in the way of mana.

Using his shifter transformation did take some mana, but much like his innate mind magic, it was

very efficient and cost almost nothing unless he transformed fully.

The war troll seemed incensed by Zorian’s casual dismissal of its attacks. It threw its heavy sword

aside and hurled itself forward in an attempt to tackle him. However, this maneuver was just as

predictable to Zorian’s senses as its earlier sword swings. The war troll spread its arms wide,

covering the entire width of the dungeon corridor with its bulk, but Zorian simply jumped upward. It

was seemingly just a hop, but he shot up all the way to the ceiling, easily getting out of the way of

the tackle.

He flipped himself in the air to land feet-first when he hit the rock, and then immediately bounced

back down with the speed and force of a cannon ball. He landed feet first on the war trolls head, and

the beast immediately went limp. The troll wasn’t dead, Zorian knew – it was extremely hard to kill a

troll through blunt physical trauma - but it was unconscious, and that was good enough for him. He

immediately hurled himself forward, seemingly charging towards the Ibasan group.

A hail of spell fire answered him, and he dealt with it the same way he dealt with projectiles before

now. By dodging them. Some of the spells had a homing function in them, but they were still unable

to keep up with him. He bounced off the walls, twisted his body in the last moment with supernatural

speed and flexibility, and threw small rocks into the path of projectiles to trigger them prematurely. At

one point he even maneuvered himself in such a way to make two spells collide into one another

mid-flight.

Nothing could touch him, and it took barely any mana to maintain this state too.

Of course, an expert mage or a coordinated group would still be able to hit him, even with his

supernatural dodging skills. This group was neither, but they would get lucky eventually, provided

they didn’t run out of mana. Thus, Zorian decided to start stalling.

He launched a single spell at the enemy group – a powerful force lance directed at one of the

Ibasans in charge of erecting shields for the whole group. The attack seemed woefully inadequate to

take down the group’s defenses, but Zorian’s magical sense allowed him to analyze magical

constructs at considerable distance and he could tell this particular mage made shields with some

very glaring flaws. The force lance was aimed perfectly at one of the weak spots in the man’s shield,

and punched through it seemingly without resistance. It then continued on towards one of the

defenders, hitting him in the shoulder and incapacitating him.

Zorian deliberately didn’t aim for the shielder. He wanted that guy to keep making his flawed

defenses that Zorian could easily exploit. If he took down him, the group might assign someone

actually good to make shields for them.

His plans of methodically taking down the group were suddenly interrupted by two events. First,

Zach decided things were taking too long and launched a powerful attack on the group from the

other side of the corridor. And secondly, someone teleported behind Zorian from the group.

The teleport was clearly meant to catch him off-guard, and was even accompanied by a renewed

projectile barrage by the main group to distract him and cover for the maneuver, but Zorian’s sense

couldn’t be fooled. The teleport was like a beacon in the night, and the only reason he didn’t

immediately turn around and kill the ambushers is that someone in the main Ibasan group took out a

rifle and aimed it at him.

Strange. Ibasans usually disdained the use of firearms.

Zorian quickly placed his arms over his heads to protect his eyes – the one place where getting hit

by a bullet might actually be a problem – even as his body still instinctively dodged everything else

thrown at him. The rifleman wasn’t that good at aiming, however, and the bullets he fired hit Zorian in

the chest and legs. They promptly bounced off his iron-like skin, doing nothing but sting a little.

However, the bullets were still very annoying, because unlike spells they didn’t register on his magic

sense and were thus far more unpredictable and harder to keep track of.

No more playing around. He quickly erected a spherical shield around himself to protect him while

he transformed and then reached out into his soul and initiated a full transformation.

The glowing white shield only lasted for two second under the hail of attacks, but it was enough.

When it broke, a grey shadow jumped out of dissipating sphere and charged at the main group of

Ibasan invaders, completely ignoring the trio of mages that teleported behind him earlier.

In his grey hunter form, Zorian’s magical senses were even more amplified, and he could clearly

sense hidden bombs the three teleporting mages were carrying. They were a trap. A suicide mission

designed to take him out of the fight if he took the bait.

The giant grey spider charged straight through spellfire, letting the minor spells break upon its furry,

chitinous carapace with no effect while dodging the heavy attacks by bouncing off the tunnels walls

in a dizzying display od acrobatics.

Before the invaders could really process what they were seeing, Zorian was already upon them. All

shields shattered at his touch – a combination of brute physical force of his spider form and an ability

to perceive minute (and not so minute) flaws in the spell boundaries of their defenses.

He didn’t kill them. The goal was to capture people for questioning, not indiscriminately kill people.

Thankfully, his grey hunter form was absolutely great for capturing mages relatively painlessly. He

just had to bite them and inject his magic disrupting poison, and they were largely neutralized as a

magical threat. He proceeded to do just that as he broke through the Ibasan defenses – simply biting

everything in sight as the group started panicking and breaking formation.

He really needed to figure out some way to deliver the poison at a distance. Biting people as a giant

spider was satisfying and all, but trying to get into melee range was a dangerous things to do in a

magical fight. Some kind of dart, maybe? He wasn’t sure how long his poison would persist outside

of his spider form, however…

In any case, this fight was over. He was still learning how to use his alternate form effectively, but

overall he was very pleased with results shown so far.

- break -

In his room at Imaya’s place, Zorian was tinkering with a large ward stone design while Kirielle drew

various things on the floor beside him. One would think his new grey hunter half would not have any

feelings towards crafting and creation, or would even disdain it. Humans often imagined wild beasts

as being disdainful of civilization, living free and unbound lives in the untamed wilderness… but the

grey hunter inside him recognized the idea of a home and found the idea of defending it with various

creations very appealing. Perhaps grey hunters normally modified their lairs somehow, either by

shaping the surrounding stone to their liking or by using their webs to create tripwires and other

defenses? He had to admit he was never actually reckless enough to go an attack a grey hunter in

its own home, so he had no idea what they looked like.

In any case, his new magical senses were less of a boon in something like designing a wardstone or

a golem core than they were in breaking magical defenses, but still helped in being able to perceive

the flow of energies so clearly. It saved time, which was an oddly important thing for someone in his

situation.

He looked at Kirielle, lying on her stomach and kicking her feet in the air while she drew a pair of

sparrows fighting each other over something. Once again, he was surprised by the level of detail in

her drawings. The scene was very lifelike.

His little sister had been remarkably tolerant of his weird and sometimes off-putting behavior this

past month. He should probably say something nice to her for a change.

“Kiri?” he called.

“Yeah?” she responded, not even turning her head to look at him.

“If I’m ever starving,” he told her, “I will eat you last.”

- break -

Here’s my impression of a very popular idea of Zorian becoming a grey hunter shifter. While this

chapter only touches upon the multitude of issues and possibility such a transformation would

cause in Zorian, it’s hopefully still interesting. And I certainly had fun writing it. :)